The Agro-Ecosystem as Natural Economic Production Unit in Romania

Elena Sima ()
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Elena Sima: Institute of Agricultural Economics, Romanian Academy, Bucharest

Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, 2011, vol. 8, issue 1, 91-108

Abstract: The natural environment, by the diversity of its ecologic systems, ensures the existence of all living beings, of the human species implicitly. The agricultural ecosystem is a functional biosphere unit, with a structure generated by the criterion of anthropic utility of supplied biomass, energetically dependent on the natural sources and fixation and transfer mechanisms. The agro-ecosystem economic value is given by the extent and modality in which it contributes, by the intermediation of the activity of the other beings, of humans in particular, to ensuring the existence, in general, and food, in particular; its economic character is mainly supported by the value and volume of the primary and secondary biological production of the eco-system, by the use of sources and resources of the ecosystem, by putting into value the energies of trophic chains from the ecosystem. In the agricultural ecosystem, the adopted structural models have largely varied in time, yet the energy dependence, anchored in the rhythm imposed by nature, has greatly limited the productive performance, by comparison to other activities. These conditionings will remain objectives as long as energy concentration into accessible forms to the human body is mainly related to biological mechanisms rather than to technologies developed by people; this is related to the use of the practically infinite reservoir of solar energy, without taking into consideration the quality, the specific organic substances respectively, which are essential for human physiology.

Keywords: sustainable development; natural resources; agricultural ecological systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q01 Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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