Assessing the energy trap of industrial agriculture in North America and Europe: 82 balances from 1830 to 2012
| dc.contributor.author | Tello, Enric | |
| dc.contributor.author | Sacristán, Vera | |
| dc.contributor.author | Olarieta, José R. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Cattaneo, Claudio | |
| dc.contributor.author | Marull, Joan | |
| dc.contributor.author | Pons, Manel | |
| dc.contributor.author | Gingrich, Simone | |
| dc.contributor.author | Krausmann, Fridolin | |
| dc.contributor.author | Galán, Elena | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-11-21T08:58:19Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-11-21T08:58:19Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2023 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Early energy analyses of agriculture revealed that behind higher labor and land productivity of industrial farming, there was a decrease in energy returns on energy (EROI) invested, in comparison to more traditional organic agricultural systems. Studies on recent trends show that efficiency gains in production and use of inputs have again somewhat improved energy returns. However, most of these agricultural energy studies have focused only on external inputs at the crop level, concealing the important role of internal biomass flows that livestock and forestry recirculate within agroecosystems. Here, we synthesize the results of 82 farm systems in North America and Europe from 1830 to 2012 that for the first time show the changing energy profiles of agroecosystems, including livestock and forestry, with a multi-EROI approach that accounts for the energy returns on external inputs, on internal biomass reuses, and on all inputs invested. With this historical circular bioeconomic approach, we found a general trend towards much lower external returns, little or no increases in internal returns, and almost no improvement in total returns. This “energy trap” was driven by shifts towards a growing dependence of crop production on fossil-fueled external inputs, much more intensive livestock production based on feed grains, less forestry, and a structural disintegration of agroecosystem components by increasingly linear industrial farm managements. We conclude that overcoming the energy trap requires nature-based solutions to reduce current dependence on fossil-fueled external industrial inputs and increase the circularity and complexity of agroecosystems to provide healthier diets with less animal products. | |
| dc.description.sponsorship | Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This research was supported by the international Partnership Grant SSHRC-895-2011-1020 on “Sustainable farm systems: long-term socioecological metabolism in western agriculture” funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, together with other matching contributions such as the Spanish project PID2021-123129NB-C4 and the European Research Council (ERC-2017-StG 757995 HEFT). | |
| dc.identifier.doi | https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-023-00925-5 | |
| dc.identifier.idgrec | 033663 | |
| dc.identifier.issn | 1774-0746 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://repositori.udl.cat/handle/10459.1/464576 | |
| dc.language.iso | eng | |
| dc.publisher | Springer-Verlag Italia s.r.l. | |
| dc.relation.isformatof | Reproducció del document publicat a https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-023-00925-5 | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 2023, vol. 43, núm. 6, p. 1-19 | |
| dc.rights | cc-by (c) Tello et al., 2023 | |
| dc.rights | Attribution 4.0 International | * |
| dc.rights.accessRights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess | |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | * |
| dc.subject | Agricultural systems | |
| dc.subject | Agroecosystem | |
| dc.subject | Circularity | |
| dc.subject | Dietary transition | |
| dc.subject.other | Boscos i silvicultura | |
| dc.title | Assessing the energy trap of industrial agriculture in North America and Europe: 82 balances from 1830 to 2012 | |
| dc.type | info:eu-repo/semantics/article | |
| dc.type.version | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion |