Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Farming System Using Ecological Footprint Analysis (Case Study: Potato and Cucumber Cultivation in Sofalgaran district of Bahar County)

Analysis of the ecological footprint in agriculture is a new and evolving subject that indicate, amount of land needed to compensate for the environmental effects of various agricultural activities. The main purpose of the study was to assess environmental sustainability of potato and cucumber cultivation in Sofalgaran District of Bahar County with using ecological footprint analysis. The quantitative approach and survey method were used and data was collected through questionnaires using a cross-sectional in period 2015-2016 crop years. Sample size were 100 potato farmers and 50 cucumber farmers. In order to assessing sustainability, based on energy consumption with environmental indicators such as; seed, water, fuel, labor, fertilizer, pesticides, potato and cucumber production were used. The sustainability comparison criterion was the global hectare (g ha) that calculated from the estimation of the ecological footprint model for each product. The results showed that both cultivation are considered unsustainable and there was a significant difference between the total ecological footprint per hectare in potato cultivation (4.03) and cucumber cultivation (3.23), so that cucumber cultivation has more environmental sustainability. According to the global hectare factor, both potato and cucumber cultivation are exploited more than the ecological capacity of a hectare productive land. However, ecological footprint of seed factor for potato cultivation with 24.5% of global hectare and for cultivating cucumber, fertilizer factor with 22.95% had the greatest impact on environmental unsustainability.