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Life Cycle Assessment of farming practices that improve citrus orchards sustainability in semiarid areas
For decades, agricultural practices have been focused on increasing yield, maximizing human labour efficiency and reducing costs. Such an agriculture intensification has led to soil, water and environment deterioration and the system could become unsustainable. Therefore, moving towards more environmental-friendly farming systems is strongly necessary. In this sense, the H2020 Diverfarming project (grant agreement no 728003) will develop and test different diversified cropping systems under low-input practices, in order to increase land productivity and crops quality, and reduce machinery, fertilisers, pesticides, energy and water demands. Within Diverfarming, the present study evaluates the sustainability of irrigated citrus in Spain, under three management practices scenarios to reduce the use of water for irrigation, fertilisers, pesticides and diesel; (SC1) baseline scenario (conventional farming practices); (SC2) pesticides reduction scenario (weed control in tree rows with black geotextile); (SC3) water supply reduction scenario (regulated deficit irrigation). In this initial overview, default data of both hypothetical scenarios were taken from the literature. The evaluation has been carried out by Life Cycle Analysis (LCA; ISO 14040 – 14044) considering the following five midpoint impact categories: abiotic depletion potential, global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, photochemical oxidant creation potential. In addition, cumulative energy demand and water use, which are especially relevant in the LCA of food products, have been also assessed. The selected functional unit was one kilogram of mandarins fruits. The application of LCA and the selection of the key environmental hotspots of three proposal scenarios have helped to identify improvement opportunities to reduce environmental impacts of farming practices, and demonstrate its usefulness in setting priorities to realise these practices.
Life Cycle Assessment of farming practices that improve citrus orchards sustainability in semiarid areas
For decades, agricultural practices have been focused on increasing yield, maximizing human labour efficiency and reducing costs. Such an agriculture intensification has led to soil, water and environment deterioration and the system could become unsustainable. Therefore, moving towards more environmental-friendly farming systems is strongly necessary. In this sense, the H2020 Diverfarming project (grant agreement no 728003) will develop and test different diversified cropping systems under low-input practices, in order to increase land productivity and crops quality, and reduce machinery, fertilisers, pesticides, energy and water demands. Within Diverfarming, the present study evaluates the sustainability of irrigated citrus in Spain, under three management practices scenarios to reduce the use of water for irrigation, fertilisers, pesticides and diesel; (SC1) baseline scenario (conventional farming practices); (SC2) pesticides reduction scenario (weed control in tree rows with black geotextile); (SC3) water supply reduction scenario (regulated deficit irrigation). In this initial overview, default data of both hypothetical scenarios were taken from the literature. The evaluation has been carried out by Life Cycle Analysis (LCA; ISO 14040 – 14044) considering the following five midpoint impact categories: abiotic depletion potential, global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, photochemical oxidant creation potential. In addition, cumulative energy demand and water use, which are especially relevant in the LCA of food products, have been also assessed. The selected functional unit was one kilogram of mandarins fruits. The application of LCA and the selection of the key environmental hotspots of three proposal scenarios have helped to identify improvement opportunities to reduce environmental impacts of farming practices, and demonstrate its usefulness in setting priorities to realise these practices.
Life Cycle Assessment of farming practices that improve citrus orchards sustainability in semiarid areas
Bernardo Martin-Gorriz (author) / Jose Francisco Maestre-Valero (author)
2019-10-09
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
DDC:
690
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