Sustainable Urban-Rural Food Production for Ethical and Just Transitions: EMergy Assessment of a Community-Supported Agriculture Project in Italy

Global crises, such as the ongoing pandemic, highlight the interconnectedness and vulnerability of human systems, requiring integrated interdisciplinary studies aimed at breaking unsustainable and unjust practices. In this work, we address a horticultural co-production system, inspired by the Community- Supported Agriculture (CSA) model. In a highly industrialised area of Northern Italy, with significant wild land consumption, an alternative bottom-up experience is described. Local organic farming and just labour conditions seek ecological sustainability and social equity beyond the market dynamics. This CSA project contributes to the resilience of a territory currently affected by health and economic plights. Its claims, limits, and potentials are investigated by means of the Emergy Accounting Analysis (EMA). The socio-ecological inputs and the monetary flows in the system at issue are identified and quantified and some key emergy-based sustainability indicators are calculated. Together with systems diagramming, the EMA assessment provides fruitful insight of a single scalable project, thus addressing the future opportunities for local improvement, the exportability to crisis and post-crisis scenarios, and the overall ethical sustainable transitions.