This paper aims to demonstrate the availability of land for growing energy crops in Emilia-Romagna Region, Italy. It is recognized that food and non food crops will compete for land in the next decades. It is then important to guarantee food need for the world population and also to assess the local need for food, in order to promote specific policies that guarantee both food and energy production on agricultural lands.. This paper proposes a methodology to assess the potential land that exceeds food demand on a relatively small scale, in contraposition to previous studies which considered a world or national perspective. Considering the trends in food crop yields and in the population growth, it is possible to obtain trend equations for calculating the potential food demand in 5 and 10 years. Food crop yields report different trends, both increasing and decreasing. The smallest and more densely populated provinces in the region result in negative land availability, demonstrating that they need the support of more rural provinces on order to provide food for a growing population. Other provinces of the region show, on the contrary, a very positive trend for energy crop land availability. When the provincial data are aggregated to the regional scale, projections for both 5 and 10 years result in positive land availability for the cultivation of energy crops. Although a simplification is necessary in order to use this kind of methodology, these results show how it is possible to associate food and non food crops without compromising food need, even at a small scale level.

A Small Scale Assessment Model of Potential Available Land for Energy Crop Cultivation

CAPRARA, CLAUDIO;GABELLINI, GLORIA
2008

Abstract

This paper aims to demonstrate the availability of land for growing energy crops in Emilia-Romagna Region, Italy. It is recognized that food and non food crops will compete for land in the next decades. It is then important to guarantee food need for the world population and also to assess the local need for food, in order to promote specific policies that guarantee both food and energy production on agricultural lands.. This paper proposes a methodology to assess the potential land that exceeds food demand on a relatively small scale, in contraposition to previous studies which considered a world or national perspective. Considering the trends in food crop yields and in the population growth, it is possible to obtain trend equations for calculating the potential food demand in 5 and 10 years. Food crop yields report different trends, both increasing and decreasing. The smallest and more densely populated provinces in the region result in negative land availability, demonstrating that they need the support of more rural provinces on order to provide food for a growing population. Other provinces of the region show, on the contrary, a very positive trend for energy crop land availability. When the provincial data are aggregated to the regional scale, projections for both 5 and 10 years result in positive land availability for the cultivation of energy crops. Although a simplification is necessary in order to use this kind of methodology, these results show how it is possible to associate food and non food crops without compromising food need, even at a small scale level.
2008
16th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, From Research to Industry and Markets
310
313
Caprara C.; Gabellini G.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11585/70398
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