| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4402870 | Procedia Environmental Sciences | 2012 | 10 Pages |
The organic agricultural production is regarded as an important way to ensure food safety and achieve sustainable agricultural development. Presented in this paper is an emergy-based analysis of two typical chicken farming systems popular in China, i.e., family-operated organic rearing system and orchard-based field rearing system, from the perspective of production efficiency, environmental impact and the overall sustainability. In addition, the similar evaluation results conducted in Italy (scatter rearing system in grassland and conventional scale rearing system) was also introduced for reference and comparison. The results showed that the emergy yield ratio (EYR) was 1.10 and 1.11 for family-operated organic rearing system and field rearing system respectively. The values are approximately equal and very close to 1, indicating that each process of the two systems only converts resources from outside into product without much addition from local resources. However, the environmental loading ratio (ELR) of orchard-based field rearing system is 3.44, a little bit higher than the family-operated system 3.10, and correspondingly the sustainable index (ESI) is lower than that of family-operated organic rearing system. Despite being close to the concept of organic production practice with respect to rearing space for exercise and feeding patterns, the field chicken farming system has a relative poor performance with regard to environmental pressure and overall sustainability, which is attributable to the large amounts input of external purchased resources, e.g. the building material, drug, feed and so on. Compared with the other two production systems in Italy, the two systems in this study have higher economic cost and heavily rely on the non-renewable resource inputs. It can be concluded that current so-called organic production model in China is far from the essence of real practice and therefore innovations in production techniques and institutional reforms associated with organic pattern are urgently needed in China.
