Water energy food nexus approach for sustainability assessment at farm level: An experience from an intensive agricultural area in central Italy

Fabiani, Stefano; Vanino, Silvia; Napoli, Rosario; Nino, Pasquale

doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2019.10.008

Cited by 74 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…In most agri-environmental programs, the lack of participation of interested stakeholders in designing frameworks, the poor information basis to support policy formulation and the failure to consider local specificities in the scheme design are reported to be the main reasons for low success achievements [63]. In a recent survey [64], the farmers' perception of compost production was found to be 83.9%, in which the participants showed also a high, yet lower, willingness level (63.6%) of the more salient option to produce compost themselves and use it in agriculture.…”

Section: Socioeconomic Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decentralized Community Composting: Past, Present and Future Aspects of Italy

et al. 2020

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Italy is among the top biowaste-generating countries in Europe, and has a well-structured waste management framework with quite a number of centralized composting facilities. In recent years, there has also been huge interest from local communities in decentralized composting. Although decentralized community composting is common in some countries, there is still a lack of information on the operative environment together with its potential logistical, environmental, economic, and social impacts. Considering the national Italian legislation on community composting as well as successfully implemented projects at EU level, Italy can set a model especially for Mediterranean countries that intend to build decentralized composting programs. Therefore, in the context of this review paper, a brief overview of the composting process was presented together with main applications in centralized and especially in decentralized composting, while the main focus was kept on the operative and legislative information gathered from Italian community composting. There is a huge difference in the number of composting plants between the regions, and the lack of centralized facilities in the central and southern regions can be supported by decentralized solutions. Decentralizing waste treatment facilities and thus creating local solutions to urban waste management strategies will help to achieve the resource recovery and valorization targets in line with the circular economy.

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Section: Socioeconomic Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decentralized Community Composting: Past, Present and Future Aspects of Italy

et al. 2020

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“…Local context priorities and value ranges in indicators dictate the need for weighting indicators, which is subjective and needs to be validated through stakeholder consultation (FAO 2021b ), as exemplified in other studies by Mabhaudhi et al ( 2019 ), Nhamo et al ( 2020a , 2020b ). However, to retain the original picture of irrigation performance, the indicators (WUE, yield, EP) were used without normalization and referencing or benchmarking, in contrast to approaches by other research work such as Hochman et al ( 2017 ) and Fabiani et al ( 2020a , 2020b ). Similar to these mentioned studies, equal weights were assigned to each performance indicator to avoid bias, and since this study focuses on reviewing available literature without stakeholder engagement.…”

Section: Conceptual Framework and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable irrigation technologies: a water-energy-food (WEF) nexus perspective towards achieving more crop per drop per joule per hectare

Taguta

Dirwai

Senzanje

et al. 2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Sustainable agricultural intensification requires irrigation methods and strategies to minimise yield penalties while optimising water, land and energy use efficiencies. We assessed, from a silo-based and integrated water-energy-food (WEF) nexus perspective, the performance of irrigation technologies in different agro-climatic regions. Secondary to this, we assessed the impact of adopting systematic approaches such as the WEF nexus on improving efficiency in irrigated agriculture through irrigation modernization. The evidence-based perspectives of silo-based performances individually considered the metrics of yield (Y), water use efficiency (WUE), and energy productivity (EP). The WEF nexus approach applied sustainability polygons to integrate the three metrics into a nexus index representing the holistic performance of the irrigation technologies. Silo-based performance in temperate regions suggests net gains for WUE (+1.10 kg.m-3) and Y (+6.29 ton.ha-1) when transitioning from furrow to sprinkler irrigation, with a net loss in EP (-3.82 ton.MJ-1). There is potential for net loss on EP (-3.33 ton.MJ-1) when transitioning from furrow to drip system in temperate regions. The best performance of irrigation technologies in dry regions in water, energy and food silos was achieved by sprinkler, drip and furrow irrigation systems, respectively. Thus, appraising irrigation technologies from a silos perspective promotes individual silos, which renders an unsustainable picture of the performance of irrigation systems. The integrative WEF nexus approach successfully highlighted the trade-offs and synergies in the nexus of water, energy and food in irrigated agriculture. Drip irrigation led all irrigation technologies in WEF nexus performance in dry (21.44 unit2), tropical (23.98 unit2), and temperate regions (47.28 unit2). Overall, the irrigation modernisation pathway to drip technology from either furrow or sprinkler systems improves irrigated agriculture's WEF nexus performance in all three regions for more crop per drop per joule per hectare under climate change. This has positive potential to influence the sustainability of planetary boundaries.

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“…No standard guidelines on moderate arable land use have been set. However, the use of optimized agricultural practices (e.g., the use of slow release and organic fertilizers) has demonstrated that it is possible to increase crop yields while limiting fertilizer use and that groundwater quality can worsen due to pollution generated through organic fertilizer use (Fabiani, Vanino, and Napoli 2020). As a result, moderately intensive arable land use should maintain a better balance between short-term crop production and long-term environmental protection, which will require long-term field research and new agrotechnology development.…”

Section: Moderate and Intensive Arable Land Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Holistic identification and assessment of environmental risks of arable land use in two grain producing areas of China

Yin

Lin

Jiang

et al. 2020

Ecosyst Health Sustain

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Taking two typical grain producing areas of southern (Dongting Lake Region) and northern China (Shandong Province) as examples, this study used fault tree analysis and parametric estimation to provide a comparative analysis for environmental risks of intensive arable land use. The results show that (1) in the risks of eutrophication, toxicity, soil structure, greenhouse effect and air pollution, the greenhouse effect was the most prominent with the highest discharge; (2) the Dongting Lake Region discharged less pollutants annually than did Shandong Province, while surpassing Shandong in cumulative pollutant discharge in 2007-2018; (3) the spatial distribution of environmental risk in the Dongting Lake Region was mostly concentrated in the northern area, whereas that in Shandong Province displayed a scattered pattern; (4) in the Dongting Lake Region, Yueyang, Changde, and Yiyang were high environmental risk cities in 2007-2018, whereas in Shandong Province, Zaozhuang, Heze, Liaocheng, and Dezhou exhibited higher comprehensive environmental risk indexes in 2007-2008, while Rizhao replaced them in 2018. The results indicated that ago-production material use must be controlled, reasonable zoning for areas posing environmental risks must be employed and cities with high environmental risk must be dynamically monitored to prevent the intensification of environmental risks of arable land use.

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Water energy food nexus approach for sustainability assessment at farm level: An experience from an intensive agricultural area in central Italy

Cited by 74 publications

References 12 publications

Decentralized Community Composting: Past, Present and Future Aspects of Italy

Decentralized Community Composting: Past, Present and Future Aspects of Italy

Sustainable irrigation technologies: a water-energy-food (WEF) nexus perspective towards achieving more crop per drop per joule per hectare

Holistic identification and assessment of environmental risks of arable land use in two grain producing areas of China

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