Life cycle assessment of wheat production and wheat‐based crop rotations
| Autor: | Sandeep Kumar, James J. Stone, Heidi L. Sieverding, Christopher Graham, Thandi Nleya, Rifat A. Karim, David W. Archer, Prashansa Shrestha |
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| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Crops
Agricultural Agroecosystem Environmental Engineering 010501 environmental sciences Management Monitoring Policy and Law 01 natural sciences Agricultural science Agricultural land Animals Agricultural productivity Waste Management and Disposal Life-cycle assessment Triticum 0105 earth and related environmental sciences Water Science and Technology Crop insurance Life Cycle Stages Agricultural diversification business.industry Agriculture 04 agricultural and veterinary sciences Crop rotation Pollution Crop Production 040103 agronomy & agriculture 0401 agriculture forestry and fisheries Environmental science business |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Environmental Quality. 49:1515-1529 |
| ISSN: | 1537-2537 0047-2425 |
| Popis: | In the northern Great Plains (NGP), wheat is the primary grain commodity. There is a need for the NGP to have a detailed analysis of environmental impacts for wheat-based agricultural production systems to better understand regional agroecosystems. This article provides a cradle-to-field gate life cycle assessment (LCA) for NGP dryland wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) production. The environmental impacts for winter wheat production using crop rotation and agricultural intensification are quantified. Fourteen no-till crop rotations ranging in duration from 2 to 6 yr were evaluated and compared using data from a historical 13-yr replicated rotation study (>300 observations). Midpoint LCA categories chosen for this comparison are energy, agricultural land use, climate change potential, freshwater eutrophication, and freshwater ecotoxicity due to their direct links with agricultural management practices. The NGP farmers commonly use a fallow period every other year due to moisture limitations. This specific agricultural practice and allocations within rotations are critical considerations within agricultural LCAs. Two aspects of fallow considerations and a sensitivity analysis were also performed. The allocated midpoint impacts between crops in rotational studies averaged 0.31, 0.79, 0.62, and 0.63 kg CO2 eq. per unit of winter wheat when energy, economic, mass, and cereal unit allocations were used, respectively. Economic analysis of the studied experimental crop was performed; results demonstrated that crop insurance policies improved diversification economics by 20%. Agricultural diversification benefits and burdens were better represented by endpoint damage assessments than by midpoint impact analysis. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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