Farm-level strategies to reduce the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of cotton production: An Australian perspective

Hedayati, Mehdi; Brock, Philippa M.; Nachimuthu, Gunasekhar; Schwenke, Graeme

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.11.190

Cited by 36 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…The majority of LCA studies of legume rotations (70%) either explicitly accounted for the amount of N fixed by legumes using literature estimates or implicitly by a reduction in fertilization of the next crop in rotation sequence (Table 3). The N benefit was not considered in 3% of the studies, due to lack of reliable data (Prechsl et al 2017;Hedayati et al 2019) or because it was judged as irrelevant for the total impact calculation (Knudsen et al 2014a). For the studies that did not mention any N fixation or where insufficient information was provided to understand the method (27%), two options are possible: (i) no N carryover was accounted for; (ii) N carryover was implicitly accounted for based on, e.g.…”

Section: N Carryover Carbon Sequestration and Allocation Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The author cautions that modifying a specific production step based on information for only one impact category can bring about negative consequences for other impact categories and other steps of the system. When applied to agriculture, many LCA studies draw boundaries or focus around a single crop or its (co-)product(s) (Bevilacqua et al 2014;Hedayati et al 2019). Thus, since the focus of these studies is on one cropping cycle, important interactions across crops and over years within crop rotations may be neglected.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Representing crop rotations in life cycle assessment: a review of legume LCA studies

Costa

Chadwick

Saget

et al. 2020

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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Purpose There is an imperative to accurately assess the environmental sustainability of crop system interventions in the context of food security and climate change. Previous studies have indicated that the incorporation of legumes into cereal rotations could reduce overall environmental burdens from cropping systems. However, most life cycle assessment (LCA) studies focus on individual crops and miss environmental consequences of inter-annual crop sequence and nutrient cycling effects. This review investigates state-of-the-art representation of inter-crop rotation effects within legume LCA studies. Methods A literature review was undertaken, starting with a search for all peer-reviewed articles with combinations of ‘LCA’, ‘legumes’ and ‘rotations’ or synonyms thereof. In total, 3180 articles were obtained. Articles were screened for compliance with all of the following requirements: (i) reporting results based on LCA or life cycle inventory methodology; (ii) inclusion of (a) legume(s); (iii) the legume(s) is/are analysed within the context of a wider cropping system (i.e. rotation or intercropping). Seventy articles satisfying these requirements were analysed. Results and discussion We identified three broad approaches to legume LCA. Most studies involved simple attributional LCA disregarding important interactions across years and crops in rotations. N-fertilizer reduction through legume residue N carryover is either disregarded or the benefit is attributed to the following crop in such studies, whilst N leaching burdens from residues are usually attributed to the legume crop. Some studies applied robust allocation approaches and/or complex functional units to enable analysis of entire rotation sequences, accounting for nutrient cycling and break crop effects. Finally, a few studies applied consequential LCA to identify downstream substitution effects, though these studies did not simultaneously account for agronomic effects of rotational sequence changes. Conclusions We recommend that LCA studies for legume cropping systems should (i) evaluate entire rotations; (ii) represent nitrogen and ideally carbon cycling; (iii) for attributional studies, define at least two functional units, where one should encompass the multifunctional outputs of an entire rotation and the other should enable product footprints to be calculated; (iv) for CLCA studies, account for both agronomic changes in rotations and markets effects; (v) include impact categories that reflect hotspots for agricultural production.

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Section: N Carryover Carbon Sequestration and Allocation Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representing crop rotations in life cycle assessment: a review of legume LCA studies

Costa

Chadwick

Saget

et al. 2020

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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“…Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) is an important industrial crop producing great amounts of byproducts annually, including cotton stalks and linters (ginning industry waste), while it also contributes substantially to global production of greenhouse gas emissions due to high nutrient and energy requirements (Hedayati et al, 2019). Moreover, although the common practice of burning or leaving remaining cotton stalks in the field reduces the handling and disposal cost of crop byproducts, it further increases environmental burden through gas and particle emissions (Kazemi et al, 2018;Riley et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cotton and cardoon byproducts as potential growing media components for Cichorium spinosum L. commercial cultivation

Petropoulos

Fernandes

Stojković

et al. 2019

Journal of Cleaner Production

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The intensification of horticultural crops cultivation makes urgent the seeking for alternative growth substrates that could substitute non-renewable and/or synthetic growing media, such as peat and rock wool. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the potential use of byproducts from two industrial crops commonly cultivated in the Mediterranean basin, namely cardoon and cotton, as growth substrates for Cichorium spinosum, while zeolite addition was also tested as a soil amendment. A pot experiment was carried for two consecutive growing periods and plant growth was evaluated for six growing media compositions, while plant extracts were also evaluated in terms of their phenolic compounds profile, antioxidant and antimicrobial activities. The results of this study showed that cotton byproducts and zeolite may partially substitute peat in growth substrate of C. spinosum and high yields comparable to peat may be achieved. Phenolic compounds content and antioxidant activity of leaves' extracts was higher for plants grown in soil which showed severe stress symptoms comparing to the other tested substrate blends. Antimicrobial activity was also affected by growth substrate composition, only in the case of antibacterial properties of leaves' extracts, whereas none of the extracts presented significant antifungal activities. In conclusion, the use of cotton ginning byproducts and zeolite in growth substrate blends may partially substitute conventional substrates as peat in horticultural crops production, resulting in reduction of production cost and lessening of bulky byproducts' management and related environmental burden without compromising yield.

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“…The largest cost, obviously, was recorded in relation to environmental pollution whose major contributors were organic fertilizer and labor power. As reported by Hedayati et al [ 50 ], agricultural production systems play an important role in reducing air emissions. These results suggest more attention should be paid to emissions management, efficiency improvement and sustainable and renewable energy use.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative analysis on environmental and economic performance of agricultural cooperatives and smallholder farmers: The case of grape production in Hebei, China

Deng

Chen

Zhao³

et al. 2021

PLoS ONE

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Agricultural modernization and intensification have been regarded as a significant way to support agricultural development and improve farm income in China. Agricultural cooperatives have played an important role in promoting the modernization and intensification of Chinese agricultural sector. Given the increasing concerns about environmental harm, however, it still remains unclear whether and the extent to which agricultural cooperatives contributes to reducing environmental impacts of agricultural production. Hence, this study performed an environmental evaluation using life cycle assessment for three different organization forms of grape production in Changli County, Hebei Province, China: smallholder farmers, farmer-owned cooperatives and investor-owned firm-led cooperatives. Then the results of life cycle assessment were monetarized and cost benefit analysis was used to evaluate the economic performance of these three organization forms of grape production. The results demonstrate that investor-owned firm-led cooperatives present an overall improvement in environmental and economic performance with the lowest weighted environmental index (integrating all impact categories into a single score), the highest net profit and the highest total net benefit. The results also show a difference in potential improvement in environmental impacts and economic returns between cooperatives and smallholder farmers. Additionally, the production and application of organic and chemical fertilizer and pesticide have been identified as major contributors to total environmental damage.

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Farm-level strategies to reduce the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of cotton production: An Australian perspective

Cited by 36 publications

References 27 publications

Representing crop rotations in life cycle assessment: a review of legume LCA studies

Representing crop rotations in life cycle assessment: a review of legume LCA studies

Cotton and cardoon byproducts as potential growing media components for Cichorium spinosum L. commercial cultivation

Comparative analysis on environmental and economic performance of agricultural cooperatives and smallholder farmers: The case of grape production in Hebei, China

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