Poplar and maize cultivations are preferred by north Italian
farmers because they are well known since many years and give the
best results in term of biomass production [11,16].
In order to evaluate the energetic, social and environmental
convenience of biomass production, in this study two multi-year
crops (poplar vSRC and SRC) and an annual crop (maize) cultivated
in an Italian farm were compared. Manpower, energy consumption,
and CO2 emission for their cultivation was analyzed for
each crop.