Sustainability Assessment of Intensive Agriculture in Argentina. Focus on Upstream (Emergy) and Downstream (Emissions) Environmental Impacts.

TOTINO, MARIANA; MATTEUCCI, SILVIA DIANA

Journal of Environmental Accounting and Management

L & H Scientific Publishing

Lugar: St. Louis; Año: 2016 vol. 4 p. 369 - 383

2325-6192

After the Industrial Revolution the agricultural sector was one of the mosttransformed. The activity releases CO2 and generates a change in landuse, advancing on ecosystems with native vegetation, which function ascarbon sinks. The model of industrial agriculture is highly dependent oninputs in the form of materials and energy, mainly fossil fuels but thereare other hidden constraints that rely on the environmental quality of resourcesused and the extent of downstream impacts generated by their usein a process, that do not emerge clearly from investigating only materialand commercial energy. As a consequence, additional investigation withalternative approaches, like emergy and emission assessment, is needed.In this article the analysis focuses on the emergy assessment and pollutantemissions by soybean production in two Argentine localities withenvironmental differences, one in the province of Buenos Aires (Rojas)and the other in the Chaco province (Charata). We used an upstreammethod (Emergy Accounting) and a downstream method (CML2 baseline2000). Both sites show Renewability smaller than 35%. The total amountof CO2eq emitted in Charata is 0.80 ton/ha/yr and 0.81 ton/ha/yr in Rojas.However, the local conditions, the impact of industrial agriculture isvery high. In Chaco region, possible regulations that establish the afforestationof certain areas around soybean crops should be analyzed, tooperate not only as carbon sinks but also as barriers for agrochemicaldrift.