Influence of Management Practices on Economic and Environmental Performance of Crops. A Case Study in Spanish Horticulture

Abstract

Influence of management practices on economic and environmental performance of crops.A case study in Spanish horticulture. AbstractThis paper assesses the effect of management practices on the environmental and economic performance of tigernut production in Spain. Tigernut is a horticultural crop grown in a very limited area with homogenous climate and soil; thus the influence of these surrounding factors on the agricultural practices and their subsequent impact can be overlooked. From an environmental perspective, the variability among farms was much greater than the one of the costs. A principal component analysis showed that keeping some impacts low would also decrease the costs. Results highlight how proper management leads to both relatively low environmental impacts and costs.

Links between profitability, nitrogen surplus, greenhouse gas emissions, and energy intensity on organic and conventional dairy farms

“…The only statistically significant profitability-environment relationship in the current study was between higher profitability and lower GHG emissions in the full sample. This finding is consistent with the general conclusion in the empirical "pay to be green" literature (Albertini 2013;Endrikat, Guenther, and Hoppe 2014) and studies in the farming sector (Fenollosa et al 2014;Jan et al 2012;O'Brien et al 2015;Repar et al 2016;Thomassen et al 2009). This result supports the "win-win" hypothesis of a positive relationship between environmental and economic performance (Porter and van der Linde 1995).…”

Life cycle cost analysis of agri-food products: A systematic review

“…The functional unit should be carefully chosen since the life cycle costs might differ significantly depending on the functional unit (e.g. yield impacts the life cycle costs per kg, while it does not impact the life cycle costs per ha) (Fenollosa et al, 2014;Tamburini et al, 2015), which is why the use of >1 functional unit might be recommended. Surprisingly, the system boundaries used to conduct a life cycle cost analysis are often not explicitly mentioned (29 papers) (Fig.…”

Assessing the environmental impact of Spanish vineyards in Utiel-Requena PDO: The influence of farm management and on-field emission modelling

“…Mechanistic models for the simulation of water and nitrogen balances in crops, such as STIC (Brisson et al, 1998) or LEACHM (Wagenet and Hutson, 1989), would also be recommended for the purposes of estimating fertiliser emissions, although greater effort is needed to understand the model and to gather the data. Those models have already been successfully applied in other agricultural LCAs (Perrin et al 2017 andFenollosa et al, 2014) and take into account irrigation practices, which is also a decisive factor for NO3emissions.…”