Life cycle assessment of wheat production and wheat‐based crop rotations

Abstract

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 wheatbased 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 CO 2 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.

A commentary on key methodological developments related to nutritional life cycle assessment (nLCA) generated throughout a 6‐year strategic scientific programme

“…This provides ample opportunities to advance (n)LCA by considering nutritional provision from rotational agricultural systems, an understudied aspect in terms of agri‐food sustainability and food security, which produce multiple food products (e.g. Shrestha et al, 2020 ). For example, nutritional metrics can be applied to the four systems trialed at Palo a Pique (each of which provides different agricultural products) to determine which system produces the most nutritionally‐ and environmentally friendly outputs at a land‐use level rather than at an individual product level, e.g.…”

Application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to cereal production: an overview

“…Taking the hectare of land as FU, they concluded that rotations are affected by the mineral fertilization processes that would be avoided in addition to the production of electricity for water pumping. Among the studies analyzed there is only one related to the U.S. area, in particular the research of Shresta et al (2020) [35] who evaluated the life cycle (from cradle to gate) of wheat in the arid areas of the "Northern Great Plains" (USA-Canada), taking as reference 5 impact categories and as FU 1 kg of winter wheat, rotating the crops. Based on the analysis, none of the rotations obtained better results in terms of environmental impact, while changing calculation methodology (endpoints), when wheat is alternated with oilseeds and legumes, lower damages are obtained.…”

“…In fact, when a comparison was made between national wheat production and the respective Global Warming Potentials (GWPs), it emerged that it was possible to proceed with this analysis only in the few cases in which an equal FU was available. Another limitation of the study is the low scientific production, so it was possible to proceed with the analysis only in China and America, whose GWP is respectively 1,210 kg CO2 eq × 1 ton [30] and 270 kg CO2 × 1 ton [35]. Therefore, multiplying these values by Chinese and U.S. wheat production, comparing the two productions, it emerged that the Chinese one, the largest at global level, is also more impactful than the American one (Figure 2), which produces only 9% of the total CO2 emissions of the Chinese one with a production equal to 40% of the first producer.…”

“…Figure 2.Comparison between wheat production and tons of CO2 eq emitted (GWP), 2020[5,30,35] *No LCA studies have been produced on domestic production of wheat.4.1.2. Corn.Regarding corn, the most globally produced cereal, currently 428 articles have been published (Scopus), mainly in China (10%) and USA (10%), Italy (8%), but also UK (7%) and Germany (7%), and other European Countries.…”

Bibliometric Analysis of Peer Reviewed Literature on Sustainable Agriculture Research – Challenges and Prospects

“…The use of agrochemicals to enhance crop yield endangers biodiversity and ecosystems (Malaj et al, 2020). Reduced fertilizer usage by replacing it with biofertilizers (Klaic et al, 2021;Tsachidou et al, 2021), ensuring a sustained release of nutrients using amendments such as biochar (Ullah et al, 2020) and nanoparticles (Avellan et al, 2021), soil organic carbon sequestration (Abera et al, 2021;Brombin et al, 2020;Mancinelli et al, 2020), crop rotation (Hirzel et al, 2021;Shrestha et al, 2020), intercropping (Shah et al, 2021), adoption of agroecological practices (Abbasi Surki et al, 2021;Rakotovao et al, 2021), utilization of crop residues for maintaining soil fertility (Berazneva et al, 2018; are important for ensuring socio-ecological sustainability.…”