Abstract

SANCHEZ-MORALES, Primo  and  ROMERO-ARENAS, Omar. Fossil fuels and CO ₂ e in traditional milpa and monoculture maize systems in Tlaxcala, Mexico. Rev. Mex. Cienc. Agríc [online]. 2017, vol.8, n.4, pp.919-932. ISSN 2007-0934.  https://doi.org/10.29312/remexca.v8i4.17.

A comparative study was carried out between two management systems in maize production in Tlaxcala: traditional milpa system (SMT) versus monoculture maize system (SMo). The objective was to determine the amount of fossil fuel energy that is used during the production process and the emission of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). The efficiency of each system and the emission of the main greenhouse gas (GHG) was estimated. To generate primary information, a mixed methodology was applied: a semi-structured interview was conducted with 20 producers and a sample size for the survey application was calculated from data from the Proagro Productivo 2014 program, where N= 29 828 and n= 379. After collecting the information, a database was prepared in Excel, coded and processed with the SPSS-16 program. The results show that the highest expenditure of fossil energy in both groups occurs during the harvest and is lower in tillage tasks. However, in this item the energy expenditure derived from oil is twice as great in the SMo. Moreover, energy expenditure calculated and CO2e emission are 30.8% higher in the SMo versus the SMT for the same amount of maize produced in each system. It was concluded that although the SMT requires more labor and animal traction force, it is more efficient in the use of fossil energy and the calculated GHG emissions are lower.

Keywords : agriculture; efficiency; energy; productivity.

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