Tth ecological footprint of agriculuture and diet: The case of Spain, 1955-2000

Abstract

The ecological footprint has become an important indicator to measure the environmental sustainability of the economic activities since its introduction in the mid-1990s. In this paper it is used to estimate the area of productive land that is demanded for the Spanish agriculture and population diet during the second half of the twenty century. We have used the Spanish specific yields to calculate the Ecological Footprint, contrary to the standard methodology that expresses its results in global average hectares. The figures shows the ecological and land impact of the agriculture modernization, the growing dependence and occupation of environmental space of spanish economy in the rest of the world to mantain its consumption of agrarian products, and the land demands associated to the expansion of a high animal protein diet.