Assessment of energy use in arable farming systems by means of an agro-ecological indicator:: the energy indicator

Efficient energy use by the agriculture sector is one of the conditions for sustainable agriculture because it allows financial savings, fossil resources preservation and air pollution decrease. We propose an Energy indicator (I-En) to evaluate environmental impacts due to energy consumption of arable farming systems to help farmers to manage their energy inputs at the field level according to the guidelines of integrated agriculture. I-En is based on the energetic analysis of four types of energy: two for indirect energy (pesticides and fertilisers) and two for direct energy (machinery and irrigation systems). In a second step, the assessed values of energy consumption are converted by means of an abacus into a mark between 0 and 10. I-En needs only data that are available on farms or easily assessed, and will be implemented with a set of seven other agro-ecological indicators to assess environmental sustainability of farms. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.