Energy use and economic evaluation of a three year crop rotation for conservation and organic farming in NE Italy

The conservation of natural resources is the most important key for a sustainable agriculture, especially considering the decreasing conditional subsidies of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU) for the coming years: the lower economic supports oblige farms to increase efficiency to reduce production costs, whilst given the interaction of agricultural activities with environment quality, appropriate natural resources management will be a crucial aspect for farms. The paper examines the efficiency of agricultural production systems and particularly the efficiency of energy use in a 3-yr soya bean, maize and wheat rotation. The study also aimed to analyse the production cost and the role of EU subsidies on farm strategies for important emerging management systems namely conservation farming (CF) and organic farming (OF) systems. Experiments were carried out in NE Italy, on a farm situated near Rovigo. Energy inputs were generally higher in the CF system but counterbalanced by a higher yield (output), while the OF system had generally reduced energy use (due to no chemical inputs) but lower yield. The economic net return was higher for the CF system, but when the economic subsidies from EU were considered, the integrated net return was higher in the OF system for soya bean and wheat.