Can we obtain high productivity allied to environmental gains? An emergy-economic study of sheep meat production systems

Lamb production in Brazil has the state of São Paulo as its largest consumer market, but due to competition for area with other agricultural activities, sheep farming in São Paulo underwent an intensification of the production system to achieve better economic profitability. This intensification can compromise the sustainability of the system. There is no research concerning about emergy evaluation on lamb production systems applied in Brazil, so this is the first paper to discuss the sustainability of lamb production systems using this method. Therefore, this article proposes to discuss the importance of considering environmental aspects in the economic analysis of production systems, aiming at the sustainable development of the sector. This study assessed the economic and emergy performance of three different sheep farms in Brazil managed under different levels of technology: Intensive, Semi-intensive, and Feedlot. Results show that from an economic perspective, the Feedlot system is more attractive (9,800 US$/yr for net profit) than Intensive and Semi-intensive ones, while emergy synthesis show that Semi-intensive system (30% for renewability) should be prioritized. On the other hand, when emergy is analyzed from an economic perspective based on Emdollars (Em$, with an ‘m’), the economic advantage regarding the production cost of Feedlot on the Semi-intensive system becomes less evident. The Intensive system obtained the worst performance for economic, and emergy indicators. More than contributing to the discussions about the importance in considering a systemic perspective when quantifying the economic performance of production systems, this study also (i) establishes the most sustainable sheep farm system that could be supported in Brazil, and (ii) make available new unit emergy values that would enrich the existing emergy databases.