Energy efficiency and GHG emissions impact from traditional to organic vineyard cultivations in Greece and Portugal

Abstract

Traditional farming systems are based on achieving high yields using high inputs, targeting acceptable farmers’ income. Nowadays, traditional farming shifts towards maximum possible crop yield using minimal inputs in an optimized way or towards organic farming, namely accomplishing low yield of high quality products without using conventional agrochemicals (i.e. fertilizers, pesticides). The last approach leads, in general, to lower energy consumption per unit area of land, therefore lower cost and lower greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). However, in a global perspective it has the risk of significant reduction in total production. Hence, it is vital to consider energy efficiency, namely the ratio between an input of energy and a unit of product, as a key comparison unit affecting the overall efficiency of crop farming systems in terms of energy and GHG emissions. In the present paper, two show cases of vineyard cultivations are presented to illustrate the energy efficiency and GHG emissions impact when switching from traditional to organic vineyard cultivations in Greece and Portugal. In the Greek vineyard case, organic farming leads to significantly lower grape yield (31%) resulting in a 0.4% reduction of energy efficiency and a 6.7% reduction of GHG emissions. In the Portuguese vineyard case, organic production results in a grape yield decrease of approximately 21%, leading to lower energy efficiency (4.7%), also reflected in GHG emissions (2.7%).