Energy Footprint of Mechanized Agricultural Operations

Lampridi, Maria; Kateris, Dimitrios; Sørensen, Claus Aage Grøn; Bochtis, Dionysis

doi:10.3390/en13030769

Cited by 22 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…However, such an approach is often highly aggregated and does not help identify the farm components that consume the most energy. In contrast, model-based predictive approaches enable ex-ante assessment of 'what if ' scenarios to explore effects of changes in management practices (Lampridi et al 2020).…”

Section: Box 2 Metrics and Indicators Used To Assess Energy Consumpti...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing energy consumption without compromising food security: the imperative that could transform agriculture

Martin

Benoît

Bockstaller

et al. 2023

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The imperative of carbon neutrality requires a drastic, rapid, and sustained reduction in fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The Russia-Ukraine war has led to a major energy crisis, whose end does not seem imminent. The sudden and major increase in energy prices resulting from this crisis has major impacts on many sectors of the societies. This is especially true for agriculture, a direct consumer of energy that also has considerable indirect consumption through the manufacture, transport, and distribution of chemical inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides. Taking the example of France, from July 2021 to July 2022, farmers were challenged with price increases as high as 48% and 111% for energy and fertilizers, respectively (Agreste, 2022). At the global scale, in 2018, greenhouse gas emissions from fossil energy consumption in agriculture represented 0.9 Pg CO2 eq. (against 9.3 Pg CO2 eq. due to agriculture, excluding emissions due to this energy consumption) and those emissions have increased by 23% since 2000 (FAO, 2020). This context calls for in-depth transformation of agriculture, which is currently overly dependent on non-renewable energy in high-income economies. While research on the subject continues to grow (Box 1), this large body of work focuses more on assessing the energy consumption of current agricultural systems using multiple metrics (Box 2) than on developing supply- or demand-side alternatives that use less energy. In response to these trends, Ramankutty and Dowlatabadi (2021) suggested pathways to sustainable food systems. However, while their recommendations included energy reduction options on the food consumption side, their focus on farming practices was restricted to improving the energy efficiency of current agricultural systems and missed the necessary redesign of farming and food systems.In this article, we look back to understand how agricultural systems came to progressively depend on non-renewable energy. We then briefly review agricultural practices and systems reducing energy consumption without compromising energy efficiency. Finally, we propose future research avenues to explore pathways for reducing energy consumption without compromising food security and sustainability challenges.

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Section: Box 2 Metrics and Indicators Used To Assess Energy Consumpti...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing energy consumption without compromising food security: the imperative that could transform agriculture

Martin

Benoît

Bockstaller

et al. 2023

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…As a result, more food must be produced to meet the demands of an expanding population. Energy has long been a vital component in servicing daily human requirements (Maria et al, 2020). Human belief that availability of energy in ancient times had only two options to carrying out any operation: one was to use energy from human muscle and the other was use energy from animal muscle.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors Affecting Mechanization Index and Farm Power Availability in Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh

Rahaman¹,

Vinayak²,

Venkat³

et al. 2023

IJARe

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Background: Agriculture is the most vital sector of the Indian economy. In 2020, India’s population was 1.38 billion, with a projected growth of 1.80 billion by 2050. As a result, more food must be produced to meet the demands. Mechanization is recognized as an important input for increasing agricultural production. It assures timely field operations, improves product quality and quantity, improves input-use efficiency and reducing labour costs and drudgery. Methods: Randomly, 5 Mandals are selected; within each Mandal, 5 villages are chosen randomly; and from each village, 20 farmers are chosen at random. For the survey, a sample of 500 farmers from 25 villages was selected to examine the mechanization index and farm power availability by considering factors such as social status, landholding and economic status of farmers. Result: According to the study’s findings, that the average mechanization index and average farm power availability were 68% and 1.64-kW ha-1, respectively. The influencing factors that observed from the study was lack of knowledge about how to use farm machines and implements, lower annual income of farmers and marginal farmers who cannot afford to buy expensive machinery and implements. The mechanization index and farm power availability increase linearly with the farmer’s economic status.

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“…Furthermore, for example, arable production it is highly seasonal since a considerable amount of time intercedes from sowing to harvesting. As a consequence, field operations are usually restricted by workability constraints that can be particularly critical with respect to the quality of the final product [3]. These operational features in agricultural production create specific workforce requirements in terms of abilities, range of expertise, and timely availability and supply.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Future of Agricultural Jobs in View of Robotization

et al. 2021

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Robotics and computerization have drastically changed the agricultural production sector and thus moved it into a new automation era. Robots have historically been used for carrying out routine tasks that require physical strength, accuracy, and repeatability, whereas humans are used to engage with more value-added tasks that need reasoning and decision-making skills. On the other hand, robots are also increasingly exploited in several non-routine tasks that require cognitive skills. This technological evolution will create a fundamental and an unavoidable transformation of the agricultural occupations landscape with a high social and economic impact in terms of jobs creation and jobs destruction. To that effect, the aim of the present work is two-fold: (a) to map agricultural occupations in terms of their cognitive/manual and routine/non-routine characteristics and (b) to assess the susceptibility of each agricultural occupation to robotization. Seventeen (17) agricultural occupations were reviewed in relation to the characteristics of each individual task they entail and mapped onto a two-dimensional space representing the manual versus cognitive nature and the routine versus non-routine nature of an occupation. Subsequently, the potential for robotization was investigated, again concerning each task individually, and resulted in a weighted average potential adoption rate for each one of the agricultural occupations. It can be concluded that most of the occupations entail manual tasks that need to be performed in a standardised manner. Considering also that almost 81% of the agricultural work force is involved with these activities, it turns out that there is strong evidence for possible robotization of 70% of the agricultural domain, which, in turn, could affect 56% of the total annual budget dedicated to agricultural occupations. The presented work silhouettes the expected transformation of occupational landscape in agricultural production as an effort for a subsequent identification of social threats in terms of unemployment and job and wages polarization, among others, but also of opportunities in terms of emerged skills and training requirements for a social sustainable development of agricultural domain.

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Energy Footprint of Mechanized Agricultural Operations

Cited by 22 publications

References 32 publications

Reducing energy consumption without compromising food security: the imperative that could transform agriculture

Reducing energy consumption without compromising food security: the imperative that could transform agriculture

Factors Affecting Mechanization Index and Farm Power Availability in Guntur District of Andhra Pradesh

The Future of Agricultural Jobs in View of Robotization

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