The Economic, Social, and Environmental Determinants for the Agricultural Output in Some European Union Countries - The Agricultural Economics of the 21st Century - page 54

since the beginning of the 1980s and by 2011 only 50 % of the energy consumed
had been sourced from fossil fuel resources.
Portugal, from 1961 until 2009, had the lowest CO 2 emissions, comparatively to
other European countries considered (Fig. 5.5 ). Indeed, France with the reduction of
fossil fuel energy consumption, since the 1980s could have obtained the lowest
levels of CO 2 emissions, which is a curious example.
The percentage of methane emission by agriculture in each country (Fig. 5.6 ),
from 1990 to 2010, was superior in Ireland (about 80 %) and inferior in Portugal
(more or less 30 % in the total of the economy).
Similar findings are possible to obtain from the Fig. 5.7 for the percentage of
nitrous oxide emissions by agriculture in each country. These findings for Portugal
are possibly in agreement with the lowest levels of productivity in farming for this
country. However, as referred to before these observations need to be analyzed with
other information and with some attention in future studies.
Portugal (about 40 %) and Greece (about 30 %) are the countries with more
population in urban agglomerations (Fig. 5.8 ) and Germany (about 10 %), Italy
(about 15 %), and France (about 20 %) are the countries with less population in
large agglomerated urban areas.
Greece and Portugal are the countries that have more freshwater withdrawals for
the agricultural sector (Fig. 5.9 ). On the other hand, the utilization of freshwater for
farming is residual in Germany (less than 10 %).
The eight countries of the European Union considered followed a pattern more
or less similar to that of inflation for consumer prices, from 1961 until 2012
(Fig. 5.10 ). The 1970s, the 1980s, and part of the 1990s were years with signs of
strong inflation (maybe hyperinflation). Some countries such as France showed one
of the lowest inflation rates for this period and Portugal and Greece had some
problems with this economic variable, namely in the 1980s and part of the 1990s.

14

12

10

Germany
Spain
France
Greece
Ireland
Italy
Portugal
United Kingdom

8

6

4

2

0

Fig. 5.5 CO 2 emissions (metric tons per capita) between European countries