Original ArticlesTrade-off assessments between environmental and economic indicators in cropping systems of Pampa region (Argentina)

- We assessed emergy use, profit, and pesticide ecotoxicity in 36 cropping systems (CS).
- The CS exhibited significant tradeoffs between economic and environmental performance.
- No single CS was clearly associated to a theoretical sustainable indicator pattern.
- Maize was the most related to a sustainable condition with low impact and high profit.
- Further studies should be conducted for including more contrasting indicators

An overall sustainability assessment should include changes in the economic return, the social benefits and the human intervention on the biophysical resources in order to highlight potential trade-off or synergies among them. In this work, we studied the performance of 36 cropping systems (CS) of the Pampa region, Argentina, which include three different crops, three increasing levels of technology adoption in four contrasting site conditions. For each CS, we simultaneously assessed 1) the ecosystem energy flow using the emergy synthesis; 2) the pesticide ecotoxicity using a simple dose-response model; and 3) the economic profit, in order to evaluate the influence of crop identity, technological level, and site location on the indicators values as well as to detect potential trade-offs between indicators. Results revealed that maize crop entailed the most sustainable indicator profile by exhibiting relative high emergy return, low non-renewable emergy use, low pesticide ecotoxicity, and high gross income. In addition, results showed a significant trade-off between economic profit and ecotoxicological risk in the CS studied. Further studies should be conducted for including more contrasting indicators in order to explore the potential trade-off among other ecosystem components as a promising way to identify sustainable crop management regimes for different production zones.