Towards an agroecological transition in the Mediterranean: A bioeconomic assessment of viticulture farming

Type: Paper

Abstract: Transformations in the agri-food system since the early 19th century have led to an unprecedented increase in food production. However, the structure of this system has generated many negative environmental and social impacts that threaten the sustainability at the local, regional and global scale. This situation entails the need for an agroecological transition that leads to an agri-food model that is aware of the planetary boundaries and guarantees the reproduction of human and all other forms of life. Agroecology is crucial for the Mediterranean, where the negative environmental and social impacts of industrial agriculture are particularly evident. The aim of this paper is to present a best practice viticulture farming that is in an advanced level of agroecological transition in the region. The results show that the energy efficiency of this agroecosystem is greater to conventional farms in the region, while generating similar financial returns but more equally distributed than the big agro-industrial companies in the sector. Based on this best practice case study, we provide several methodological and practical insights on the energy balance of the farm system, supplemented by data on the value-added distribution from wholesaler selling back to the industrial winemaking and vine-growing incomes, and the final financial returns of the company. The results highlight the need of multifactorial analyses that contribute to a systemic perspective on the synergic elements and leverage points for scaling-up the agroecological transition of Mediterranean viticulture.

Using thermodynamics to understand the links between energy, information, structure and biodiversity in a human-transformed landscape

Type: Paper

Abstract: According to classical ecological theory, biodiversity at ecosystem scale can be viewed as the direct product of landscape complexity and information, and the inverse product of energy dissipation. The main difference between natural ecosystems and agroecosystems is the external energy driven by farmers. Hence, it could be argued that biodiversity in biocultural landscapes can be explained by an energy-information-structure model. We developed an Energy-Landscape Integrated Analysis (ELIA) to predict biodiversity levels in human-transformed landscapes. ELIA combines the energy-flow accounting in agricultural landscapes from abioeconomic point of view and landscape ecological metrics that assess the functional structure of the land cover. It uses indicators to assess the energy stored in internal loops (E) and the information incorporated into the energy network (I) to establish a correlation with the resulting patterns and processes in biocultural landscapes (L). We tested the model on biodiversity data using butterflies and birds. The results showed positive correlations between butterfly and bird species richness and ELIA, and, above all, between I and ELIA. This emphasizes how different strategies of agricultural management combined with nature conservation can be employed at certain optimal points in the relationship between the energy-information-structure of biocultural landscapes and the biodiversity present therein. ELIA modelling is the key to a new research agenda that will be very useful for designing more sustainable agroecosystems, metropolitan green infrastructures, and land-use policies, in line with the forthcoming Agroecology Transition planned by the European Commission and the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Modelling land use planning: Socioecological integrated analysis of metropolitan green infrastructures

Type: Paper

Abstract: Land use planning of global metropolis is essential to meet the socioecological challenges of the next decades. This paper aims to contribute to sustainable land use policies by proposing a socioecological integrated analysis of metropolitan green infrastructures, applying this landscape-metabolism model to the Urban Master Plan of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area. The paper assesses the multiple functions and services of the green infrastructure in four land use scenarios and two types of agricultural management. The results show that the trending scenario of applying the current land use planning would have a negative impact in the ecological functioning of the landscape, affecting biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services to society. The results also show that certified organic farming is not enough to overcome some trends of industrial agriculture as low energy efficiency or greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, the results show different interactions between social metabolism and landscape ecology, as changes in the form of metabolism affect the functioning of the landscape, while changes in land cover specially affect resource use. Therefore, deeper changes are needed in land use policies that consider not only land covers, as has traditionally been done, but also metabolic flows to promote agroecological transitions towards more sustainable metropolitan green infrastructures under climate change scenarios.

Organic farming increases functional diversity and ecosystem service provision of spontaneous vegetation in Mediterranean vineyards

Type: Paper

Abstract: Spontaneous plant species in agricultural systems (i.e., weeds) are bound to become key ecological indicators of agroecosystem resilience as they show high sensitivity to management, while they ensure the assembly of multiple ecological functions. Here we used the response-effect functional framework on spontaneous plant species growing in both organic and conventional vineyards, to assess whether their plant communities respond to contrasted farming systems and to soil conditions according to its competitive response and the provisioning of pollination services. The results show that the spontaneous plant communities and its functions better reflected the effects of management -when considering the dichotomy organic-conventional farming- rather than soil conditions. Organic management in vineyards promoted higher plant species richness, with varied competitive response strategies to deal with different environmental conditions and management disturbances. Organic vineyards held more diverse and resilient plant communities for the provisioning of pollinator services than the conventional ones, which is expected to enhance pollinator communities with diverse feeding guilds. In contrast, conventional farming systems selected anemophilous plants or those with flower attributes related to generalist pollinators. Such results highlight the significance of organic farming for the sustainment of the local accompanying plant diversity but also for the provisioning of ecosystem services in these agricultural landscapes. Besides, the study reinforces the applicability of the response-effect framework to identify the effects of vineyard management on the spontaneous plant communities and its potential impacts on the pollinator communities.