Material and Energy Demand for Soybean Production in Argentina

TOTINO, MARIANA; MATTEUCCI, SILVIA DIANA; ARÍSTIDE, PABLO

Journal of Environmental Accounting and Management

L & H Scientific Publishing

Lugar: St. Louis; Año: 2016 vol. 4 p. 353 - 367

2325-6192

Since the 1990s, Argentina's agriculture suffered great transformationsdue to the use of GM soybean. This crop has been transferred from themost fertile area of the country, Pampa, to areas with greater environmentalfragility like Chaco. The agricultural model is highly dependent onexternal inputs, and while there is qualitative information about the processcalled "sojización", quantitative studies of the demand for materialsand energy of soybean in Argentina at local level have not yet been done.The objective of this study is to evaluate such demand and determinewhich inputs are those with higher loading of materials and energy usingMFA (Material Flow Analysis) and Embodied Energy Analysis (EEA),respectively. The results indicate that the greatest demand is abiotic mass,and, within it, the loss of topsoil is the most important. The total amountof material inputs required by soybean production was 6.6 kg/kg of soybean.The greatest value is the abiotic mass, with 3.91 kg/kg of soybean,followed by water, with 2.44 kg/kg of soybean. Extrapolating the obtaineddata in the study area, we can roughly estimate the material andenergy consumption in the entire country. For example, agrochemical useby soybean was one third of the total used in Argentina during the analyzedcampaign (2009-2010). In terms of embodied energy, each kg ofsoybean requires 0.02 kg of oil equivalent, i.e. 9.68E+05 J/kg of soybean.According to our results, 25% of energy consumption in the agriculturalsector of Argentina is solely due to soybean production. Over the courseof recent decades it was shown that the industrial agricultural system,highly dependent on supplies and materials, is not a solution to the problemsof food shortages, but rather, it is the cause of many of them, as wellas the cause of significant impacts on the environment and humans.