Torbjörn Rydberg

EMERGY SYNTHESIS 9: Theory and Applications of the Emergy Methodology

The global area of planted biofuel crops has been increasing rapidly, but the environmental and social consequences of widespread adoption of biofuel production remain largely unexplored. How do we measure efficiency and net energy of a complex system, such as the interaction between agriculture, human society and technology? This paper provides ba...

In this volume, 42 papers are presented that resulted from the 8th Biennial Emergy Conference held in Gainesville, Florida in January 2014. Some of these were published elsewhere as journal articles, and for those papers, we include the abstract and the citation for the article. Because of the large numbers of papers, we have organized them into “T...

Argentina has a tradition of grazing livestock and the Pampas region produces 61% of the total beef cattle, with more than 80% allocated to internal consumption. Potential for expanding exports has created incentives for increasing production, yet national decisions should include an assessment of natural resources and environmental impacts of the...

Large-scale production of biofuels is increasingly touted in national policies and international trade agreements. This global trend is particularly clear in Brazil. However, the sugarcane monocultures promoted in the country depend on a range of fossil fuel derivates, industrial inputs, chemical fertilizers, agrochemicals, machinery, labor exploit...

This article explores the potential of integrating Participatory Learning and Action Research (PLAR) and Systems Ecology (SE) for improving research capability in facilitating sustainable development transitions in agriculture. Goal conflicts that arose in a PLAR group working on sustainability issues in small-scale organic tomato production are an...

In this paper two methods for energy analysis and environmental accounting (Gross Energy Requirement and Emergy Synthesis) are critically discussed in order to explore their ability to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the performance and environmental sustainability of human-dominated production processes. In order to allow a quantitative comp...

This paper presents emergy evaluations of Denmark and Danish agriculture for the years 1936, 1970 and 1999. The evaluations highlight the changing relationship between agriculture and society over the time period studied. A large increase in total emergy supporting the Danish economy was observed, and the 379% rise from 1936 to 1999 in emergy use p...

An emergy evaluation was conducted on the systems of coffee (Coffea arabica L.) production, processing and export in Nicaragua in order to evaluate the environmental contributions to the tradeable products and thus enrich the discussion about fair trade. The emergy indices calculated were: transformities, % renewable, environmental loading ratio an...

Wind erosion and rising water tables are serious threats to the ecological sustainability of annual plant-based farming systems on deep, infertile sandplain soils in southwestern Australia. In this study, an annual cropping system was compared with two novel perennial plant-based systems designed to address these threats in terms of their use of re...

Introduction This energy analysis of the Australian economy was carried out as part of a study comparing the sustainability of alternative land use systems in southwestern Australia (Lefroy and Rydberg 2003). Flows of energy and materials between the environment and the economy were identified for each of three farming systems (annual crop rotation...

Horse traction in the context of Sweden 1927 and tractor traction in the context of Sweden 1996 were compared in terms of their resource requirements. Flows of energy, material and service from the environment and the economy were identified for the two traction-producing systems. The environmental work and human activity involved in generating nec...

This study examines and evaluates, by using emergy analysis, the use of environmental resources for wastewater treatment in a Swedish town. Emergy analysis was applied, while it facilitates the comparison of resource use of substantially different kind. In the emergy analysis, all resources are assessed on the basis of the amount of direct and indi...

The weed flora on 57 arable fields on 17 farms employing organic farming was recorded. With the ordination technique pCCA (partial Canonical Correspondence Analysis) the relative importance of some farming practices was evaluated (crop, preceding crop, ± undersown ley, ± weed harrowing, ± weed hoeing, ploughing regime, ± compost, ± animal husbandry...

This paper identifies a number of essential ecosystem services, and estimates their generation by the Swedish agricultural landscape under different production intensities. This is exemplified with data from a low-intensity period (1950s) and a high-intensity one (1990s). The services are described in qualitative and, to the extent possible, quanti...

The effect of weed harrowing direction and driving speed (5, 9 and 13 km/hour) was studied in field experiments in Sweden for three years. Weed harrowing was performed when the test crop (Avena sativa) had developed 3–4 leaves. Effects were studied on both weeds and crop. Special attention was given to the degree of soil cover on the oat plants as...