The footprint of organic farms. Some ecological indicators to evaluate it Department of Food crops – State University of Milan

Summary

Agro-ecological indicators are a tool which provides an agile evaluation of the ecological footprint of a farm. This paper analyses the preliminary results of a survey in which 7 agro-ecological indicators were calculated for 81 organic farms in the region of Lombardy in the northern part of Italy.
The indicators chosen (all indicators of State) are: hedges and rows, energy input, energy output, energy output/input ratio, N balance, P2O5 balance, works unit per hectare.
The preliminary results suggest that these indicators allow to discriminate between different farms on the basis of the productive orientation (cropping classes). In perspective, the use of indicators may enable farmers to improve the management of their farm, evaluating the ecological footprint in order to reduce it gradually.