Evaluating the ecosystem sustainability of circular agriculture based on the emergy theory: a case study of the Xingyuan circular agriculture demonstration site in Fuqing City, Fujian

Abstract

Since the introduction of the Circular Economy in the 1990s, the management practice of circular agriculture has been rapid advancement. Based on the principles of sustainable agricultural development, circular agriculture has been the subject of numerous reports, which have evaluated and studied the development of this new agricultural practice at different scales. However, one of the most widely used methods of accounting for different forms of energy and resources-the emergy theory-has yet to be employed in evaluating circular agriculture. Emergy describes one kind of available energy that is used up in transformation, directly or indirectly, to make a product. It measures quality differences between forms of energy that are generated by transformation processes in nature, and that support work in natural or human dominated systems. In this study, the emergy analysis method was partly modified and specifically tailored for circular agriculture systems, and then used to evaluate the sustainability and economic benefits of ecosystem development. To validate the feasibility and quality of the improved emergy analysis method, we conducted assessments in four complex circular systems at Xingyuan circular agriculture demonstration site in the city of Fuqing, Fujian Province. We found that total production input could be substantially overestimated under the traditional emergy theory, as the systematic feedback emergy was accounted into total inputs. Further, the environmental stresses from the tremendous amount of wastes generated in the studied systems were not

Integrated Emergy and Economic Evaluation of Huzhou Mulberry-Dyke and Fish-Pond Systems

“…Then, a series of emergy indices are established to measure economic and ecological benefits. The emergy investment ratio (EIR), the environmental loading ratio (ELR), the emergy sustainability index (ESI), the system stability (SS), and the emergy ratio of wasteful to renewable resources (WR) are criteria for environmental quality, and the emergy yield ratio (EYR), input and output ratio (ROI), and the emergy monetary value (EMV) are economic standards [36,41,42] (Table 3). Table 3.…”