Landscape Agroecology. The Dysfunctionalities of Industrial Agriculture and the Loss of the Circular Bioeconomy in the Barcelona Region, 1956–2009

Abstract

The paper analyses how between 1956 and 2009 the agrarian metabolism of the Barcelona Metropolitan Region (BMR) has become less functional, losing circularity in biomass flows and in relationship to its landscape. We do so by adopting a Multi-Energy Return on Investment (EROI) and flow-fund (MuSIASEM) analyses and the nexus with landscape functional structure. The study of agricultural flows of Final Produce, Biomass Reused and External Inputs is integrated with that of land use, livestock, power capacity, and population changes between 1956 (at the beginning of agrarian industrialization) and 2009 (fully industrialized agriculture). A multi-scale analysis is conducted at the landscape scale (seven counties within the Barcelona metropolitan region) as well as for the functions deployed, within an agroecosystem, by the mutual interactions between its funds (landscape, land-uses, livestock, and farming population). A complex nexus between land, livestock, dietary patterns, and energy needs is shown; we conclude that, from the perspective of the circular bioeconomy the agrarian sector has gone worse hand in hand with the landscape functional structure. Therefore, a novel perspective in landscape agroecology is opened.

Circular Bio-economy—Paradigm for the Future: Systematic Review of Scientific Journal Publications from 2015 to 2021

“…The reference here is to bottom-up initiatives which resulted in the success of the agro-industrial complex in the Almeira region of Spain which is making good use of the opportunity to become an integral part of a sustainable circular bioeconomy, by recognising the resource potential of the horticultural residues generated [33,49,170,379]. On the other hand, in a historical analysis of the complex nexus among landscape, livestock, farming population and land uses in the agrarian metabolism in Barcelona, researchers have concluded that there has been a conspicuous decrease in circularity over time [146], which needs to be restored. French researchers tried to simulate the re-designing of the farming system in a small region of France, by imagining near-complete local circularity through crop and livestock symbiosis (feed-manure cycle), fewer livestock and avoidance of external inputs (chemical fertilisers for instance) [171], and arrived at the conclusion that while mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the farming community would have to be content with a drop in both food and bioenergy production.…”

Evaluation of China’s Circular Agriculture Performance and Analysis of the Driving Factors

“…Empirical evidence shows that economic, self-sufficiency, environmental, and social goals have significantly different effects on the performance of planting models. Cattaneo et al [20] proposed that, from the perspective of the circular bio-economy, the agrarian sector has gone worse hand in hand with the landscape functional structure. Toop et al [21] proposed that, in the context of the agri-food chain, the circular economy aims to reduce waste while also making the best use of the wastes produced by using economically viable processes and procedures to increase their value.…”

“…(1) Unit root test. According to [20], this article used the augmented Dickey−Fuller test method, which is mainly used to verify the stationary hypothesis of time series. It can be seen from Table 6 that, at the significance level of 1%, the first-order difference series of X 1 , X 4 , X 5 , and X 6 were stationary; at the 5% level of significance, the first-order difference series of Y, X 2 , and X 3 were stationary, which satisfied the premise of the co-integration test of the same-order single integration.…”

Energetic assessment of the agricultural production system. A review

“…Agroecological energy analysis is applied to regional and national scales (Gingrich et al 2018b). Indeed, one goal of this approach is to explain landscape evolution and its relation with food system pattern (Padró et al 2017;Cattaneo et al 2018;Gingrich et al 2018a). Exergy approaches are also mainly focused on regional and national scales (Utlu and Hepbasli 2006;; Ghandoor and Jaber 2009; Ahamed et al 2011) with one exception addressed at farm scale (Liu et al 2017) and another two which were out of the "Web of Science" request (Huysveld et al 2015;Amiri et al 2020).…”