Evaluation of Environmental Effects in Producing Three Main Crops (Corn, Wheat and Soybean) Using Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract

Today, environmental pollution and greenhouse gases emissions are one of the human society challenges which is attracted many countries, scientists and researchers attention. To control and reduce the pollution needed to track the environmental impact during the production of the desired product. Since the world's population is growing, the demand for food has increased. Therefore, the agricultural industry required to appropriate policy management to reduce the environmental impacts for producing the healthier products. LCA approach specifies the environmental impact during the production of the interest product. In addition, three crops of corn, wheat and soybean were announced as ten of world's first listwith universal value. Therefore, producing these crops according to the type of planting and the rate of inputs consumption and also identified the negative impacton environment during planting is essential for the proper management of resources. After collecting and classifying information about these three crops, we enter those information in SimaPro software. According to the obtained results, the amount of acidification and photochemical oxidation indicators for wheat, corn and soybean was calculated to be 16.7427, 14.8964, 6.6459 kg eq and 0.7145, 0.6342, 0.359 kg eq, respectively. Therefore, the results showed that the maximum amount of acidities and photochemical oxidation were belonged to the wheat production. Also in another environmental indicators soybean producthad the maximum amounts. Finally, to reduce environment impacts of production, some solution has been provided for resource consumption management.