Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
crop loss is smaller due to higher acceptance of less-than-perfect crops.
Therefore, the case farm does not need to produce as much to provide the
same amount of vegetables at the consumer's door as the model produc-
tion system.
Land required for providing the food service using standard practices
vary between 4.29 ha for the high-yielding model system to 9.02 ha for the
low-yielding model system (Table 2). The area required by the case farm
(6.36 ha) is within this range. The land use effi ciency at the system level
may be calculated as the food energy provided to the consumer per hectare
of cultivated area (Table 2, vegetables + green manure). This value is 13.3
GJ/ha for the case farm and varies between 9.4 GJ/ha (M-Low) and 19.8
GJ/ha (M-High) for the model systems. This indicates that the case farm
has yields within the range of the standard practices.
The consumer price of total output from the case system is £86,800.
This is signifi cantly lower than the consumer price for the model systems'
output, which is £147,300 (Table 4). That the case farmer is able to sell
the products at a signifi cantly lower price may be explained by the fact
that the full revenue goes directly to the farm (Figure 1A) whereas in the
modeled systems the supermarkets, freight companies and regional distri-
bution centers (RDC) need to make a profi t as well (Figure 1B).
1.5.2.1 BENCHMARKING BASED ON EMERGY USE
The emergy use for purchased materials in the model systems is very simi-
lar in total but is differently distributed among the different components,
e.g., M-Low has twice as much input in the cultivation phase whereas
M-High has five times higher input for soil fertility enhancement. By defi-
nition, the emergy use in the distribution phase and for L&S is identical
for the two systems. The L&S constitute by far the biggest contribution
for both M-Low and M-High with about 92% in both systems. The total
emergy used for L&S is 5.9 × 10
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seJ for the model systems (Table 4),
which is 70% more than for the case system. This directly reflects that
consumer price for the vegetables are 70% higher in the supermarket than
in the direct marketing scheme.
