Energetic and Economic Analyses for Agricultural Management Models: The Calabria PGI Clementine Case Study

Abstract

Farming systems need to be planned to provide suitable levels of economic profitability and, at the same time, ensure an effective energy use, in order to perform environmentally friendly production strategies. The herein present work aims to assess the efficiency of energy use and economic impacts of the main farming methods (conventional, organic and integrated) of Clementine’s crops in Calabria (South Italy), through a combined use of Life Cycle Energy Assessment (LCEA) approach and economic analysis. For this purpose, data were collected from clementine producers by using face-to-face interviews. The results revealed that average energy consumption in the organic farming systems was 72,739 MJ, lower than conventional and integrated systems equal to 95,848 MJ and 94,060 MJ, respectively. This is mainly due to the ban of chemicals. Economic analysis showed that organic farms were more profitable compared with the other farming methods, because of the greater selling price and the EU economic support, reaching an average net profit of 4255 € ha−1 against 3134 € ha−1 of integrated farms and 2788 € ha−1 of conventional ones. The economic efficiency of energy from clementine production was 0.058 € MJ−1 in the organic farming, higher compared to the other two farming systems equal to 0.033 € MJ−1 on average.