A Life Cycle Assessment of Organic and Chemical Fertilizers for Coffee Production to Evaluate Sustainability toward the Energy–Environment–Economic Nexus in Indonesia

Abstract

Coffee is an important agricultural commodity that is branded according to its environmental criteria in the global market. Therefore, Indonesia’s coffee production system needs to be investigated to meet the demand for eco-labeling, which has become a consumer preference. This study aims to assess the comprehensive sustainability evaluation of coffee production nurtured by an organic fertilizing system (OFS), chemical-organic fertilizing system (COFS), and chemical fertilizing system (CFS) that focuses on the energy–environment–economic nexus. A life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle cost analysis (LCC), and energy analysis were performed as methods to evaluate the environmental impact, economic performance, and energy requirement analysis. The results indicated that the OFS had superior performance in two sustainability aspects: resulting in the lowest environmental damage and generating the highest economic benefit. Simultaneously, COFS shows the highest sustainability performance as it consumes the least energy. In contrast, CFS indicated the lowest sustainability performance in all aspects: highest environmental impact, lowest economic benefit, and highest energy consumption. Therefore, OFS is strongly recommended to be applied broadly, considering its environmental and economic superiority. Consequently, massive OFS application was followed by higher energy consumption. Alternatively, COFS can be considered for application due to its higher energy performance, even though it can potentially result in higher environmental damage and lower economic benefit. However, the government should explicitly provide some effort for the broad application of OFS in financial and assistance support since the shifting process needs more time to adapt.

Organic amendment composition and sowing depth in coffee Arabica: Effects on seedling growth biometrics

“…This study's outcome also agreed with several other research outputs [ 2 , 4 , 5 , 32 , 34 , [44] , [45] , [46] , [47] , [48] , [49] ] who generally and concisely reported that taller plant heights were observed when grown using organic amendments such as forest soil, decomposed coffee husk, farmyard manure, vermicompost, animal and plant biochar etc. This could be because of a huge amount of organic matter and total nitrogen present [ 15 , 17 , 19 , 50 ] which enhance the capacity to easily uptake nutrients [ 42 , 51 ], maintain soil moisture and enhance soil fertility [ 52 , 53 ] that ultimately improves growth media porosity, aeration and water retention capacity [ 54 ].…”

“…The earlier days of 50 % emergence (59.89 ± 20.71) were observed at a depth of 2 cm whereas the delayed seedling emergence (63.65 ± 20.44) was found at 3 cm sowing depth ( Table 3 ). In line with the current study, some authors describe that forest soil and organic fertilizers improve plant emergence velocity and yield enrichment [ [32] , [33] , [34] , [35] , [36] , [37] ]. In addition, seedling emergence in decomposed coffee husk application is more effective compared to using topsoil only [ 5 , 33 , [38] , [39] , [40] , [41] ], probably due to the availability of high organic carbon and the primary macronutrients [ [15] , [16] , [17] , [18] ] and low pH value, bulk and particle density ( Fig.…”

Life cycle cost analysis of agri-food products: A systematic review

“…No significant differences are observed for the inclusion of the different cost categories when comparing older studies with studies that have been published more recently. The cost of (some) externalities is only considered in 12 studies (Albizzati et al, 2021;Blanc et al, 2018;Blanc et al, 2019;Canaj et al, 2021a;Canaj et al, 2021b;Dobon et al, 2011;Moosavi-Nezhad et al, 2022;Rahmah et al, 2022;Ribeiro et al, 2018;Ruviaro et al, 2020;Saber et al, 2020;Smith and Lal, 2022) (Fig. 4).…”

Land Swap Option for Sustainable Production of Oil Palm Plantations in Kalimantan, Indonesia

“…The increase in FFB will not only boost the export volume that will generate more foreign exchange, but it will also raise farmers' income. In the future, to ensure sustainable agriculture production, it is crucial to take economic sustainability into account [33].…”