Economic sustainability

Climate ChangE-R project aims to develop agricultural techniques able to reduce greenhouse gases emissions (GHG) produced by the agricultural system, both vegetable and livestock, within Emilia-Romagna Region. In particular, reduction of methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) through the application of Best Practices for growing crops and breeding, defined according to the LCA (Life Cycle Assessment).

The Department of Agricultural Sciences of the University of Bologna has been in charge of the economic sustainability assessment of Best Practices identified in Environmental Awareness Levels (LAA1, LAA2 and LAA3).

In particular, the economic assessment performed on the data collected by the demonstration farms that have adopted Best Practices in 2014 and 2015. The purpose the study is to verify the economic advantage of low-impact farming practices compared to the most traditional one. The assessment is based on Gross Margin variation between different Increasing Environmental Awareness Levels in different years.

Findings shows how the convenience in the implementation of a low-impact farming mainly occurs but not for all type of crops considered. Differences are also motivated by the variety, in term of structural characteristics and farming system, between demonstration farms.

Some criticalities have emerged in term of the robustness of the results, due to the limited number of observations and the data quality, which are not always sufficiently consistent in order to perform accurate economic assessments.