Cajamar has presented today at the Polytechnic University of Madrid a new edition of its report ‘Sustainability indicators in the agri -food sector’, prepared by researchers from the Center for Studies and Research for the Management of Agricultural and Environmental Risks (CEIGRAM) of said University.
From the publication of the first installment, in October 2022, this work is raised as an observatory in which indicators are collected that make possible the Sustainability monitoring throughout the Spanish agri -food production value chainwith the objective of facilitating the quantitative analysis of the selected parameters and their comparison with the rest of the countries of the European Union, as well as for the design of new public policies and strategies in the context of the 2030 Agenda.
With the publication of this second installment, we want to provide the report of a periodic character and turn it into a reference in sustainability, which completes the most short -term analysis that on the agri -food sector provides every year the observatories of the agri -food, national and regional sector, also published by Cajamar in collaboration with the Valencian Institute of Economic Research (IVIE).
In the presentation of the document, the director of the Etsiaab, José Manuel Palacios; The president of Cajamar, Eduardo Baamonde; the director of the CEIGRAM and coordinator of the publication, Isabel Bardají, and the Deputy Director General of Analysis, Coordination and Statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Andrés Escudero. Next, the Director of the Cajamar Studies Service, Ignacio Atance, has moderated a colloquium on the importance of measuring the sustainable performance of the agents of the sector in Spain, in which in addition to Isabel Bardají, the director of Sustainability, Quality and Innovation of Agro-Food Cooperatives Spain, Juan Sagarna, and the head of the Food Program of WWF Spain, Celsa Peitado, have participated.
The importance of measuring sustainability
As Eduardo Baamonde, president of Cajamar: has indicated: “Measure allows you to analyze and diagnose. Knowing in which areas improvements occur and in which there are setbacks or improvements slowed or have an insufficient rhythm to respond to existing needs. And also compare to what extent our sector, enormously competitive in the European context, has an economic, social and environmental performance equal, superior or lower than the rest of the European Union. “
The updated edition of the report raises from 60 to 90 the number of indicators analyzed With respect to the 2022 report, relative to both the agricultural sector and the food industry, and grouped around the three fundamental dimensions of sustainability: economics (Gross added value, productivity of labor, foreign trade and prices); social (Employment, salaries, food consumption, overweight and food waste) and Environmental (Water, energy, biodiversity, soils, nutrients, greenhouse gas emissions, contamination by nitrogen compounds, phytosanitary products and ecological production), subdivided in turn in dozens of more specific variables. All of them have been selected from three basic criteria: their relevance, the availability of reliable and comparable data with the rest of the EU, and the existence of temporary series that allow an evolutionary analysis of the sector.
In the future, a pending challenge in the field of sustainability, and especially in the field of environmental indicators, is Being able to have micro information, at the exploitation level, that allows to interpret and analyze the macro information better, added, such as the one that collects this report. In that sense, developing them as the next Pharmacy Sustainable Network of the European Commission will be a tool of great value, which will be used in future deliveries of the document presented today.
Positive evolution
The evolution of the set of indicators analyzed is not homogeneous, as is logical given the number of magnitudes analyzed and their amplitude. However, in global terms it can be affirmed that More progress is more than setbacks in the general sphere of sustainability of the sector.
In economic matters, the report show once again the weight of the sector, which provides 11.4 % of the Gross Value (VAB) European agri -food, above the weight of the Spanish economy in Europe (8.6 %), supported, as it is also found in the document, by The greatest productivity and good behavior of foreign trade. In addition, in recent years VAB and agricultural income has grown in Spain above the EU average. The block is completed with indicators related to the evolution of prices, agricultural structures and risk management.
The social indicators section performs an exhaustive employment analysis. In Spain, this remains stable around 1.3 million workers (sum of agricultural and industry), while losing troops in the EU. Both Spain and the EU suffer the aging of the employed and a lower presence of women, especially in the agricultural sector, which in this case is more pronounced in Spain than the EU.
Finally, the report includes two large sections on environmental issues: Statement indicators and impact indicators. The states include those related to soils, water, energy, biodiversity and ecological production. In terms of water, between 2005 and 2020 the irrigated surface increased by 14 % while demand made 4 %, descending therefore the average consumption per hectare. The greater presence in irrigation of woody crops and the generalization of drip irrigation explain this evolution. In terms of energy, prices have favored a recent decrease in their consumption, but the indicators show that there is still a route to improve the energy efficiency of Spanish agriculture.
In relation to impact indicators, they measure the use of fertilizers and their balance, greenhouse gas emissions, pollution by nitrogen compounds and the use of phytosanitary. In the case of phytosanitary, there has been both in Spain and in the EU-27 a decrease in its consumption and in the harmonized indicator of risk of phytosanitary products, reflecting a decrease in the toxicological profile of the products used.
The study has been coordinated by Isabel Bardají and written by Miguel Alcantud, Irene Blanco, Paloma Esteve, Luis Lassaletta, Alberto Sanz and Barbara Soriano; All of them researchers at the CEIGRM of the Polytechnic University of Madrid.
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