Abstract
In this study, emergy analysis and footprinting were combined to assess and illustrate the total resource use caused by milk production and to identify the renewable fraction of this resource use. The total efficiency was defined as a function of the resource use and the multifunctionality of production. The classification of ecosystem services in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) was used as the basis for ranking multifunctionality. Three scenarios with different degrees of input intensity and milk production were constructed and compared with the current production mode. The ratio of local renewable resource use to total resource use differed greatly between the different production strategies, being 1:3 for a self-sufficient organic farm and 1:14 for a conventional farm with maximum milk yield. Milk production was fivefold higher on the conventional farm, while generation of ecosystem services increased with increasing self-sufficiency under the local conditions prevailing in the study. Ecosystem services in all categories except provisioning were ranked higher when self-sufficiency increased.
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Thanks to Ebba and Sven Schwartz foundation for funding this study.
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Björklund, J., Johansson, B. (2013). Assessing Multifunctionality in Relation to Resource Use: A Holistic Approach to Measure Efficiency, Developed by Participatory Research. In: Marta-Costa, A., Soares da Silva, E. (eds) Methods and Procedures for Building Sustainable Farming Systems. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5003-6_11
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