A large amount of fossil fuel energy is used in modern agriculture. From an ecological aspect, the fossil fuel energy fixed in industrial products such as chemical fertilizers and herbicides makes agriculture inefficient. Agricultural practice needs to be aware of energy efficiency to implement low input management and to reduce the environmental impact. This study demonstrates a method of calculating the input-output energy ratio for 32 crops and examines the changes in the energy efficiency of crop production in Japan from 1970 to 1990. The results at the country level show that the input-output energy ratio changed from 2.0 to 1.2 in the two decades. The primary reason for this decline is due to the increase in the planted area of greenhouse vegetables, whose input-output energy ratio is 0.02-0.07. The secondary reason for this decline is due to the decrease in the planted area of paddy rices, whose input-output energy ratio is 2.5-3.1. The results at the prefecture level show that the input-output energy ratio declines especially in Kochi, Kumamoto and Okinawa prefecture, whose percentages of planted area of greenhouse vegetables are more than three times larger than the average for all the prefectures. The results presented also imply that agriculture in Japan has increased its impact on the natural environment through an increased use of fossil fuel energy.

methods

Input-Output Economics

Energy Efficiency of Crop Production in Japan, 1970-1990

The indirect transactions between sectors of an economic system has been a long-standing open problem. There have been numerous attempts to conceptually define and mathematically formulate this notion in various other scientific fields in literature as well. The existing direct and indirect effects formulations, however, can neither determine the direct and indirect transactions separately nor quantify these transactions between two individual sectors of interest in a multisectoral economic system. The novel concepts of the direct, indirect and transfer (total) transactions between any two sectors are introduced, and the corresponding requirements matrices and coefficients are systematically formulated relative to both final demands and gross outputs based on the system decomposition theory in the present manuscript. It is demonstrated theoretically and through illustrative examples that the proposed requirements matrices accurately define and correctly quantify the corresponding direct, indirect, and total interactions and relationships. The proposed requirements matrices for the US economy using aggregated input-output tables for multiple years are then presented and briefly analyzed.

background

/pdf/direct-and-indirect-transactions-and-requirements-3bvjueb2ir.pdf

Direct and indirect transactions and requirements

The urban sustainability is a growing importance in the built environment research. Urban areas play a key role in planning for sustainable city development. Urbanization has implications for futur ...

/pdf/modeling-urban-energy-flows-at-macro-and-district-levels-cn6foeh8fl.pdf

Modeling urban energy flows at macro and district levels : towards a sustainable urban metabolism

Many industrial complexes are chains of unit processes, the end-product of one process being the raw material for another; often the same process can also make several end-products sequentially and, furthermore, intermediate products can be bought in or sold. In managing these "multi-processes", cost accountants often use input/output models to measure historic internal costs while simultaneously, planners calculate the most profitable future mix of end-products from linear programming (LP) models. A general combined cost/LP model is proposed here, usable either for costing purposes or for LP planning. Its cost version can include standard cost techniques; when used with the planning version, it leads to the concept of "super-standard" costs for the most profitable way of running the multiprocess. The combined model is thus a basic part of an overall management information and control system.

Input-Output Economics

Citations

Energy Efficiency of Crop Production in Japan, 1970-1990

Direct and indirect transactions and requirements

Modeling urban energy flows at macro and district levels : towards a sustainable urban metabolism

Combined Cost and Linear Programming Models of Industrial Complexes

Economic Impacts of Hybrid and Electric Vehicles in Japan and China: National and Multi-Regional Input-Output Applications

Related Papers (5)

Introduction to input-output economics

Input-output and regional economics

Input-Output Analysis and Contemporary Economics

The use of input-output analysis in planning

Input-Output