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Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 120 (2007) 470–471

Letter to the Editor

Sustainability of poultry production

Sholto Maud

Malbourne, Australia

Received 26 April 2006

Available online 15 November 2006

Keywords: Sustainability; Agriculture; Ecosystem; Energy; Emergy; Emdollar; Empower; Money

Dear Editor(s),

In their comparative emergy evaluation of conventional

and organic poultry rearing-production systems, Castellini

et al. (2006) maintain that economic interests interfere with

proposed strategies for sustainable development. They state

that:

‘‘Even in agriculture, farmers assess their productive

practices mainly on economic efficiency, which generally

requires large amounts of inputs (both natural and technical)

with scarce attention to environmental pollution (reduction

of organic matter, concentration of toxic compounds, etc.)

and to future reproducibility.’’ (p. 343)

With the aim of extending the emergy synthesis I make

two assumptions in this letter that need to be corrected if

they are in error:

A. E

016

doi:

mergy accounting (Odum and Odum, 1983, 2000;

Odum, 1994, 1996a,b; Scienceman, 1987, 1989, 1991,

1997; Tennenbaum, 1988) is the most appropriate method

for evaluating the sustainability of ecological systems.

B. B

oth poultry systems contrasted by Castellini et al.

(2006) are agricultural business entities with periodic

statements of financial position and performance.

1. EmDollar (Em$) accountancy

Emergy accountant D.E. Campbell (2005) has observed –

rightly in my view – that a business is not sustainable if it

DOI of original article: 10.1016/j.agee.2005.11.014.

E-mail address: sholtom@yahoo.com.

7-8809/$ – see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

10.1016/j.agee.2006.08.008

cannot pay both financial and environmental debts. On this

basis it seems reasonable to conclude that a sustainability

measure for a poultry enterprise system must include both

ecological and economic interests. That is, both economic

efficiency and ecological efficiency must be evaluated. This

seems especially important if we want to assess the degree

to which economic (or, alternately, ecological) interests

benefit or burden any proposed strategies for sustainable

development.

Campbell maintains that accountants are able to reconcile

monetary and emergy accounts on a business entity’s balance

sheet using, ‘‘a combined emergymoney measure; e.g., the

emdollar’’ (p. 33). Presumably this means that an accountant

will also be able to produce statements of emdollar position

and performance, and in doing so give a complete assessment

of business ecological-economic sustainability.

This author cannot find such reconciliation statements in

the Cesare Castellini et al. report. I would therefore like to

invite Cesare Castellini et al. to publish the monetary

accounts of both conventional and organic businesses along

with the emergy accounts in the aim of synthesising an

emdollar position and performance of the poultry enterprise.

2. Emergy-based enterprise management

Can the emergy methodology itself provide a basis for

sustainable ecological-economic poultry enterprise manage-

ment? Without providing monetary accounts, one cannot

assess the following:

� W

hether the emergy methodology can provide an on-

going framework for strategic, and sustainable business

decision-making.

S. Maud / Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 120 (2007) 470–471 471

� H

ow it effect a business entity’s monetary accounts if one

aims to run a business to maximize the emergy yield

sustainability ratio rather than the economic efficiency

ratio.

� H

ow much of the dollar budget a business must spend on

emergy evaluation in order to ensure that the ecological-

economics of the business are sustainable.

Emergy evaluations and education require large amounts

of dollar, natural and technical inputs that are often not

included in the general emergy or dollar ledgers. This claim

may be supported up by noting the rarity of emergy systems

accountants and the absence or emergy accountancy

certification or ISO standardization. According to H.T.

Odum, rarity is a measure of hierarchical position and thus

transformity. The high levels of knowledge, skills and

energy embodied in training emergy accountants therefore

appears to make emergy accountancy itself very high

transformity. However, again, without monetary accounts

(and emergydollar evaluation) it is difficult to assess whether

the control feedbacks of the emergy accountant actually

amplify anything of value to a business entity. For example,

if organic farming is what emergy methodology recom-

mends as the most sustainable ecological-economic enter-

prise management method then the emergy methodology

itself, whilst comforting, is nevertheless redundant. One can

simply run the organic farm without regard for emergy

evaluation.

Let us make another assumption that the emergy

methodology does provide value to a poultry enterprise.

However, without monetary accounts documenting the dollar

expenses of emergy accounting we cannot see whether

emergy evaluation is a one-off , ‘‘single drop’’ (Odum, 1983,

p. 71) affair, or whether it must be an on-going, ‘‘continuous

loop’’ (Odum, 1983, p. 71) which continually feeds-back

control information into business decision-making processes

in order to make them sustainable. H.T. Odum suggested that

steady state systems were continuous loop, which seems to

indicate that emergy evaluation needs to be an on-going part

of enterprise management. But again, without dollar accounts

we also cannot assess whether emergy evalutation provides

too great a dollar load on the finances of the poultry system to

be economically and consequently ecological-economically

sustainable.

So it is difficult to determine what value the emergy

accounting has for a business enterprise in terms of the emergy

of the system, the money of the system, the emergydollar of

the system, and the sustainability of the system when it is run

as a business entity. Perhaps an organic poultry system

running at maximum empower has the tendency to go

bankrupt? The point is moot, and the Cesare Castellini et al.

study should be treated as a preliminary investigation that

anticipates a larger scientific study.

On this basis I issue the following challenge to Cesare

Castellini et al., or any other emergy accountant. I challenge

you to set up an empirical study of three poultry (or other

comparative business) systems all managed with three

different enterprise logics: (1) conventional system managed

on the logic of economic efficiency; (2) an organic system

managed on the logic of organic farming (organic

efficiency?); (3) and lastly a poultry system managed

wholly by the dictates of emergy evaluation and modelling

(emergy efficiency?). To be a truly scientific study it is

recommended that emergy, dollar and emergydollar

simulation models be constructed prior to the empirical

exercise as a means of hypothesis generation, prediction and

testing. This will be a way of demonstrating how accurate

the emergy modelling procedure is by matching emergy and

dollar account simulation predictions for the three different

systems to actual empirical account data.

References

Campbell, D.E., 2005. An Energy systems view of human dominated

systems: what is sustainable? Western Ecol. Div. (October (27)),

http://oregonstate.edu/groups/biodiversity/dan.campbell.seminar.pdf.

Castellini, C., Bastianoni, S., Granai, C., Dal Bosco, A., Brunetti, M., 2006.

Sustainability of poultry production using the emergy approach: com-

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