Abstract
In this chapter, I discuss some important theoretical issues that should be addressed when attempting a sustainability assessment of the biophysical performance of agri-food systems . Assessing the sustainability of an agri-food system is a complex matter due to the multi-functional nature of agriculture and the multi-scale nature of the relations between agroecosystems and socio-economic systems . The complexification of the agri-food system makes it difficult to clearly establish what is local , and what can be described as a short food chain, and we might be confronted with cases where, according to certain environmental criteria, products imported from a long distance can perform better than locally produced ones. I argue that a fund/flow analysis is a very useful approach when assessing the pressure on biophysical systems and monitoring their health (stock/flow, and flow/flow may also be useful approaches). Energy is the cornerstone of any living system, including societies. I discuss how energy efficiency and energy flow (power) need to be understood as mutually dependent factors, and how they play a key role in interfacing with the performance of the agri-food and socio-economic systems. If we address societies as living systems, we adopt the concept of metabolism as a useful approach to study the functioning of the biophysical characteristics of agri-food systems and societies alike. In this chapter, I review the history of the concept of metabolism in this context and the approaches taken by the two main schools of thought on the topic. As many definitions are found in literature on the subject, I try to suggest two possible definitions, taking into account the specific approaches. The Vienna school , led by Marina Fischer-Kowalski, embraces a stock/flow and flow/flow approach, considering society as a black box. I would suggest naming this approach “steady-state social metabolism”, or, for short, “social metabolism”. The Barcelona school, led by Mario Giampietro, addresses the relation between fund/flow patterns taking place in a society (its internal organisation), and the fund/flow patterns taking place in its environment as a co-evolutionary, self-organising process. I would suggest naming this approach “co-evolutionary societal-ecological metabolism”, or, for short, “societal metabolism”. Finally, I stress that a biophysical analysis has to be carried out in parallel with an analysis of the socio-economic dimension of a society, as the two dimensions are strictly correlated. I point out that in order to develop a more sustainable agri-food system, we have to intervene in the very functioning of society, and that the complex nature of society’s metabolism has to be carefully addressed.
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Notes
- 1.
Of course, efficiency also concerns the socio-economic side of productive activity, for example labour, capital.
- 2.
- 3.
Germany may not be food self-sufficient even if all the agricultural land were to grow wheat and pea in rotation and no animals were reared (Gomiero 2017).
- 4.
See Sect. 3.5.1 for definitions of the terms viability, feasibility and desirability.
- 5.
There are still small societies (i.e., isolated communities of hunter and gatherers and horticulturists) where the complexity of the communities is very limited compared to industrialised countries.
- 6.
According to Altieri (2002, p. 8) “Agroecosystems are communities of plants and animals interacting with their physical and chemical environments that have been modified by people to produce food, fibre, fuel and other products for human consumption and processing”.
- 7.
Actually, fossil fuels are renewable but over geological times, that is to say tens/hundreds of millions of years, a timespan that is not compatible to the life time of human societies or the human species.
- 8.
Phosphorus has no substitute in food production. Phosphorus security is emerging as one of the twenty-first century’s greatest global sustainability challenges (Cordell and White 2014).
- 9.
Fossil water, also known as paleowater, is water that has been contained in some undisturbed space, usually groundwater in an aquifer, for thousands of years. Fossil water aquifers are either poorly replenished or not replenished at all, making groundwater in those aquifers a non-renewable resource (Steward et al. 2013).
- 10.
An important indicator of energy efficiency is the Energy Return On Investment indicator (EROI, or EROEI, the Energy Return on Energy Invested). EROI refers to how much energy is returned from one unit of energy invested in an energy-producing activity (Hall et al. 1992, 2011; Giampietro and Mayumi 2009; Pelletier et al. 2011). See Hall et al. (2011, 2014), for a review of the different approaches to the calculation and Tello et al. (2016) for a further development of the concept in the case of agriculture.
- 11.
Nevertheless, while the use of more and better technology may help increase labour productivity, it requires a lot of energy too. Computerised tractors, satellites, and other technologies do not come cheap in energy terms, Genetic Modified Organisms are a risky enterprise, and seem to lead to more problems (e.g., pest resistance, increased use of agrochemicals, soil degradation, a worrisome monopoly on seeds, health issues). Technology is also costly in economic terms, and its adoption tends to follow a process of fast-decreasing marginal returns (increasingly large investments compared to prices, leading to reduced net earnings). Large estates can cope with the problem because of their economies of scale. Smaller farmers face bankruptcy instead, and have to quit their jobs, their farms bought by large estates, which get even larger (Mazoyer and Roudart 2006).
- 12.
- 13.
The impact of technology on highly populated countries of the Global South has been a concern since the 1960s. The issue was addressed by renowned scholar Ernst Schumacher, who, in the 1970s, popularised the concept of “intermediate technology”, a technology that is appropriate in order to increase productivity in countries of the Global South, but only to a certain extent—to prevent the spread of massive unemployment (Schumacher 1973).
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Gomiero, T. (2017). Biophysical Analysis of Agri-Food Systems: Scales, Energy Efficiency, Power and Metabolism of Society. In: Fraňková, E., Haas, W., Singh, S. (eds) Socio-Metabolic Perspectives on the Sustainability of Local Food Systems. Human-Environment Interactions, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69236-4_3
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