Assessing the environmental impacts of contrasting farming systems

摘要

This paper examines how opportunity costs of land use can be taken into account when life cycle assessment (LCA) is used to compare environmental impacts of contrasting farming systems. Energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) balances of organic, conventional and integrated farm models are assessed. It is assumed that the farm size and food product output are equivalent in all farm models, and the remaining land that is not needed for food crops is used for Miscanthus energy crop production. The impacts of integrating biogas production into the farming systems are also explored. The results illustrate the significance of taking into account the opportunity costs of land use and suggest that integrated farming systems have potential to reduce negative environmental impacts compared to organic and conventional systems.