Department of Environmental Science and Policy, Università degli Studi di Milano, 20133 Milan, Italy.
Departamento de Ingeniería Agroforestal, ETSIAAB, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Av. Puerta de Hierro, 2, 28040 Madrid, Spain.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Jun 20;826:154107. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.154107. Epub 2022 Feb 24.
Agricultural activity is responsible of considerable negative effects on the environment. In this context, in the last years, organic cultivation is increasing being perceived as more sustainable for the environmental. Nevertheless, this higher sustainability compared to conventional agricultural systems is debated. This applied for crops but also for livestock systems. For some of the main crops (i.e., cereals, soybean) comparative analysis were carried out but for most of the other annual and perennial crops there is a lack of information about the environmental impact related to conventional and organic cultivation In this study, the environmental impact of the conventional and organic farming systems of hazelnuts production in Viterbo province in Italy was evaluated using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. Even if originally developed for industrial processes, LCA is more and more applied also to agriculture systems to quantify the environmental impact. Primary data were collected by the main Producer Organization and elaborated considering 1 kg of hazelnuts as functional unit and a from cradle to gate approach considering the 50-years as life cycle duration of the crop. Finally, using the Recipe characterization method, 15 midpoint impact categories were evaluated. The results show how, except than for ecotoxicity related impact categories, organic cultivation practice shows higher impact (from +5% to +285%) respect to the conventional production. For ecotoxicity related impact categories, organic hazelnut production performs better (from -42% to -81%) than the conventional one because no synthetic pesticides are applied. The sensitivity analysis carried shows how yield is the main driver of the environmental results while the uncertainty analysis performed with the Monte Carlo technique shows that the to the selection of the data source, model imprecision and data variability does not significantly affect the environmental results for the evaluated impact categories.
农业活动对环境造成了相当大的负面影响。在这种情况下，近年来，有机种植被认为对环境更可持续，因此越来越受到关注。然而，这种相对于传统农业系统的更高可持续性仍存在争议。这不仅适用于作物，也适用于畜牧业系统。对于一些主要作物（如谷物、大豆）已经进行了比较分析，但对于大多数其他一年生和多年生作物，关于常规和有机种植的环境影响的信息却缺乏。在这项研究中，使用生命周期评估（LCA）方法评估了意大利维泰博省榛子生产的常规和有机农业系统的环境影响。尽管 LCA 最初是为工业过程开发的，但它越来越多地应用于农业系统，以量化环境影响。主要生产者组织收集了原始数据，并根据 1 公斤榛子作为功能单位进行了详细阐述，并采用从摇篮到大门的方法，考虑到作物的 50 年生命周期。最后，使用配方特征化方法评估了 15 个中点影响类别。结果表明，除了与生态毒性相关的影响类别外，有机种植实践的影响（从+5%到+285%）比常规生产更高。对于与生态毒性相关的影响类别，有机榛子生产的表现优于常规生产（从-42%到-81%），因为没有使用合成农药。进行的敏感性分析表明，产量是环境结果的主要驱动因素，而使用蒙特卡罗技术进行的不确定性分析表明，对数据来源、模型精度和数据变异性的选择不会对评估的影响类别对环境结果产生显著影响。
