ABSTRACT
Chapters 1 through 4 looked at the technical and methodological aspects of this innovative proposal aimed at evaluating energy efciency in agrarian systems from an agroecological perspective. In Chapters 5 through 9, we applied this proposal to seven case studies. Three of them are diachronic studies conducted on different scales: national (Spain), municipal (Santa Fe), and crop (café), showing the changes that have occurred with the transformation from traditional to industrialized agroecosystems. The remaining four case studies are synchronic, and three of them apply to the crop scale: avocado (AVO), dry-farmed olives (OLIdry), and irrigated olives (OLIirri), while the last one was applied to a large number of livestock holdings (LIV). The aim was to illustrate the transition from industrialized agroecosystems to modern certied organic agroecosystems. In Chapters 5 through 9, we attempted to analyze in depth the use of energy and its efciency in different situations and farming businesses, showing the robustness of the proposed methodology and the consistency of the results obtained. In this chapter, we draw more general conclusions that can provide a foundation for the sustainable design of agroecosystems based on energy analysis and the use of the proposed indicators. Indicators not only take into account the input and output ¥ows of energy, but also the ¥ows that circulate
CONTENTS
10.1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 227 10.2 Evolution of EROIs from an Economic Point of View ...............................228 10.3 Evolution of EROIs from an Agroecological Point of View ...................... 231
10.3.1 Biodiversity EROI ......................................................................... 231 10.3.2 NPPact EROI .................................................................................. 233 10.3.3 Agroecological Final EROI...........................................................234 10.3.4 Woodening EROI .......................................................................... 235
10.4 Application to the Design of Sustainable Agroecosystems ........................ 236
within. This chapter aims, rst, to identify the major common trends highlighted by the different case studies; second, to explain the existence of common patterns or divergence; and third, to draw conclusions that can be used to design more sustainable agroecosystems from an agroecological perspective.
