Conducting an Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment: Challenges and Perspectives
| Autor: | Matthew W. Veal, Kevin R. Caffrey |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2013 |
| Předmět: |
Crops
Agricultural Conservation of Natural Resources Livestock Natural resource economics Conservation agriculture Population lcsh:Medicine Aquaculture Review Article lcsh:Technology General Biochemistry Genetics and Molecular Biology Agricultural economics Food Supply Soil Water Supply Animals Humans Animal Husbandry Agricultural productivity lcsh:Science education Life-cycle assessment General Environmental Science education.field_of_study Land use lcsh:T business.industry lcsh:R Agriculture General Medicine Agricultural communication Natural resource Environmental science lcsh:Q business |
| Zdroj: | The Scientific World Journal, Vol 2013 (2013) The Scientific World Journal |
| ISSN: | 1537-744X |
| DOI: | 10.1155/2013/472431 |
| Popis: | Agriculture is a diverse field that produces a wide array of products vital to society. As global populations continue to grow the competition for natural resources will increase pressure on agricultural production of food, fiber, energy, and various high value by-products. With elevated concerns related to environmental impacts associated with the needs of a growing population, a life cycle assessment (LCA) framework can be used to determine areas of greatest impact and compare reduction strategies for agricultural production systems. The LCA methodology was originally developed for industrial operations but has been expanded to a wider range of fields including agriculture. There are various factors that increase the complexity of determining impacts associated with agricultural production including multiple products from a single system, regional and crop specific management techniques, temporal variations (seasonally and annually), spatial variations (multilocation production of end products), and the large quantity of nonpoint emission sources. The lack of consistent methodology of some impacts that are of major concern to agriculture (e.g., land use and water usage) increases the complexity of this analysis. This paper strives to review some of these issues and give perspective to the LCA practitioner in the field of agriculture. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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