Kalvani Somayeh Rezaei, Sharaai Amir Hamzah, Masri Mohammad Firdaus, Yunus Nurul Faeiqah Mat, Afendi Mohd Ridzuan, Uchechukwu Onyeiwu Brendan
Department of Environment, Faculty of Forestry and Environment, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Malaysia.
Institute of Tropical Agriculture and Food Security, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Malaysia.
Int J Life Cycle Assess. 2022;27(8):1092-1105. doi: 10.1007/s11367-022-02083-4. Epub 2022 Aug 9.
Sustainable agri-food production is incredibly important for society. Despite Iran and Malaysia being one of the highest production countries for paddy rice, there is no study on the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) for rice production for both countries in the literature. The lack of data and complexity of social issue are the challenges of conducting the S-LCA study. This study compared the social impacts from the related stakeholders in the life cycle of paddy rice production between Malaysia and Iran.
This study applied S-LCA based on UNEP (UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative, 2020) as an evaluation technique to investigate social issues and social performance of paddy rice production in Malaysia and Iran. This research included workers, local communities, and farmers as the stakeholders. The inventory data were collected by using questionnaires. The subcategories for evaluation were adapted from UNEP 2020 guideline. The items in the questionnaire were separately validated by experts in Malaysia and Iran, and the reliability was done by conducting pilot studies in Malaysia and Iran. The questionnaires were distributed by multistage sampling method. The following four steps were conducted following the ISO14040 framework: (1) goal and scope definition, (2) social life cycle inventory analysis (S-LCI), (3) social life cycle impact assessment (S-LCIA), and (4) interpretation.
The result showed that the social performance of workers and farmers in Malaysia was better than Iran because of low cost with high yield for farmers, contributing to increased income. Rice cultivation in Iran for local community did not show good performance regarding health and safety because of burning of rice residue. Around 62% of local Iranian people reported air pollution from rice residue burning. However, the overall social performance for local community was not different in Iran and Malaysia, showing good performances with respect to job opportunity. Sexual harassment was identified as one of the negative social issues in Iran with the score of 60%, including unwanted sexual attention. Moreover, the farmers showed poor performance in Iran, resulting from low satisfactory from income, and low yield and high cost of paddy production in Iran.
The key investigation from this research revealed that social performance of crop production in different geographical areas could show different results. The key finding from this study reported that modern agriculture could increase social and economic performance by reducing the production cost, and increasing productivity and social performance in terms of satisfactory from income for farmers. The result of this study can be used for policy makers to improve social performance by using modern agriculture.
可持续农业食品生产对社会极为重要。尽管伊朗和马来西亚是水稻产量最高的国家之一，但文献中尚无关于两国水稻生产的社会生命周期评估（S-LCA）的研究。数据的缺乏和社会问题的复杂性是开展S-LCA研究的挑战。本研究比较了马来西亚和伊朗水稻生产生命周期中相关利益相关者的社会影响。
本研究采用基于联合国环境规划署（UNEP/SETAC生命周期倡议，2020年）的S-LCA作为评估技术，以调查马来西亚和伊朗水稻生产的社会问题和社会绩效。本研究将工人、当地社区和农民作为利益相关者。通过问卷调查收集清单数据。评估的子类别改编自联合国环境规划署2020年指南。问卷中的项目分别由马来西亚和伊朗的专家进行验证，并通过在马来西亚和伊朗进行试点研究来确保可靠性。问卷采用多阶段抽样方法分发。按照ISO14040框架进行以下四个步骤：（1）目标和范围定义，（2）社会生命周期清单分析（S-LCI），（3）社会生命周期影响评估（S-LCIA），以及（4）解释。
结果表明，马来西亚工人和农民的社会绩效优于伊朗，因为农民成本低、产量高，有助于增加收入。由于焚烧稻茬，伊朗当地社区的水稻种植在健康和安全方面表现不佳。约62%的伊朗当地人报告了稻茬焚烧造成的空气污染。然而，伊朗和马来西亚当地社区的总体社会绩效并无差异，在就业机会方面表现良好。性骚扰被确定为伊朗的负面社会问题之一，得分60%，包括不必要的性关注。此外，伊朗农民表现不佳，原因是收入满意度低，以及伊朗水稻生产成本高、产量低。
本研究的关键调查结果表明，不同地理区域作物生产的社会绩效可能呈现不同结果。本研究的关键发现是，现代农业可以通过降低生产成本、提高生产力以及在农民收入满意度方面提高社会绩效，从而提升社会和经济绩效。本研究结果可供政策制定者利用现代农业来改善社会绩效。
