Agrarian Metabolism: The Metabolic Approach Applied to Agriculture

Abstract

In this chapter, we describe the theoretical and methodological background of this work. Our aim was to offer a new perspective on the evolution of Spain's agricultural sector over the last century, moving the focus away from growth capacity towards sustainability. We wished to discover whether the sector had been able to grow over time without deteriorating its social and ecological resources. To tackle this question, we chose the framework of Social Metabolism. Within so-called Sustainability Science, this framework currently provides the broadest capacity of analysis. The present research was thus conducted using the methodological tools included within Material and Energy Flow Accounting (MEFA). MEFA tools have been largely developed by the Sustainable Europe Research Institute (SERI), the Wuperthal Institute and the IFF-Social Ecology of Vienna (Economy-Wide. Material Flow Accounting, EW-MEFA). The methodologies are designed to obtain data that support the analysis of the biophysical trajectories of economies and societies, both today and throughout history. They also measure the biophysical relationships between territories, describe and characterize resource consumption and the ways in which resources are appropriated. Sufficiently consistent data can be obtained allowing to evaluate the degree of sustainability of the relations between a given society and its environment. MEFA thus constitutes an appropriate instrument to study the material aspects of socioecological transitions. Few studies, however, have adopted this methodology to analyze biomass production and its role in the economy at large (