Life-cycle assessment in agricultural systems

摘要: The agriculture sector faces mount-ing pressure to increase productivity, reduce costs while maintaining product quality, and respond to regulatory and market shifts. This publication discusses Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA), a tool to help growers and policymakers understand the full environmental impacts of an agricultural production system, identifying ways growers can improve overall efficiency. Use of this tool may open up new “green marketing” opportunities and even lead to reduced overall costs through better utilization of energy, equipment, and agrochemical resources.LCA is defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as a tool to analyze the potential environmental impacts of products at all stages in their life cycle. Products can be goods or services, ranging from electricity to consumables to waste-management strategies (ISO Standards). LCA examines a product’s entire life cycle beginning with extraction of natural resources and continuing through production of materials, product parts, and the product itself, to the use of the product, packaging, and recycling or final disposal (see Figure 1). Materials transport and