=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2030/HAICTA_2017_paper34
|storemode=property
|title=Environmental Assessment of Precision Farming Techniques in a Pear Orchard
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2030/HAICTA_2017_paper34.pdf
|volume=Vol-2030
|authors=Anna Vatsanidou,George Nanos,Spyros Fountas,Theofanis Gemtos
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/haicta/VatsanidouNFG17
}}
==Environmental Assessment of Precision Farming Techniques in a Pear Orchard==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2030/HAICTA_2017_paper34.pdf
Environmental Assessment of Precision Farming
Techniques in a Pear Orchard
Anna Vatsanidou1, George Nanos2, Spyros Fountas3, Theofanis Gemtos2
1
Center for Research and Technology-HELLAS, Institute for Research and Technology-
Thessaly, Greece, e-mail: vatsanidou@ireteth.certh.gr
2
Department of Agriculture, University of Thessaly, Greece
3
Department of Natural Resource Management and Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural
University of Athens, Greece
Abstract. Pears require a substantial number of inputs for satisfactory yield
and quality. High inputs increase costs, reducecompetitiveness and induce
environmental problems. In thecurrent study the environmental profile of a
pear orchard, located in central Greece, was developed under different
agricultural practices. More specifically, the environmental impacts of using
different nitrogen (N) fertilizer application techniques (uniform and variable
rate application, VRA) were revealed and compared. UsingN VRA, less N was
used, offering cost reduction to the farmer. A Life Cycle Assessment was
performed, following the ISO standards. The results showed that 55 % of the
total emissions to air in the Particulate matter impact categorywere due to
nitrogen oxide and ammoniaderived from fertilizer use. Moreover, carbon
dioxide fossil and dinitrogen monoxide emissions to air coming also from
fertilizer production and application were significant contributors to Climate
Change exceeding the amount of 80% of the total emissions in this impact
category.
Keywords: Nitrogen application, LCA, Variable rate application, GHG,
Precision farming
1 Introduction
LCA methodology was frequently applied in the fruit sector during the last ten years,
giving a preference to the evaluation of the agricultural production stage. Several
studies concluded that young tree growing stage was the most impacting phase in the
life-cycle of fruits (Ingrao et al., 2015). Mila i Canals et al. (2006) applied LCA to an
apple orchard in an attempt to find the environmental profile of the apple orchards
and to identify the hotspots in the production system studied. In that 2-year research,
he found that more that 50% of most impact categories results are due to energy-
related emissions. He noticed that energy consumption deriving from mechanization
(including machinery production) should be a focus of attention. A cradle to market
study on commercial pear orchards identified the environmental hotspots regarding
only fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the field production part
279
of the supply chain (Liu et al., 2010). They found that fertilization mainly with
synthetic fertilizers (since emissions from manure were ascribed to livestock
production) and the use of agricultural machinery were the most important
contributors to the total of GHG emissions, while more fossil energy was used for
irrigation and machinery. A number of relevant impact assessment indicators were
chosen to reveal the environmental performance of the agricultural stage in a food-
sector study. The results showed that farm stage almost in all impact categories had
the higher contribution, e.g., 90% of water footprint, 60% of carbon footprint from
which 40% came from nitrogen fertilizer application (Dinitrogen monoxide (N2O)
emissions) and 41% from fertilizers and pesticides production.
The present report describes a complete environmental impact research using the
LCA methodology. Following the basic steps of a life cycle analysis, the report starts
with the goal and scope of the study. In this section the pear orchard is described and
the objectives of the study are stated. The important elements of the system
boundaries and the functional unit are defined as well. The inventory is the next
section of the report, where all the inputs and outputs are presented, as well as the
equations needed to calculate the emissions from resource consumption. Moreover,
the main assumptions concerning the land use, the production stages, the cultivation
system of the pear orchard, and the scenarios needed to show the robustness of the
results, are also reported, along with allocation, quality of the data and the default
impact assessment method. Result section is coming next where the impacts are
quantified using the endpoint and the midpoint method of life cycle impact
assessment (LCIA). The software SimaPro 8.0.4.30 (PRé Consultants, Amersfoort,
NL) was adopted to analyze all the LCIA steps, characterization, normalization and
weighting. At the end of this report the discussion of the results is presented
2 System’s Functions and Functional Unit
The main objective of the study was to develop the environmental profile of the
particular pear orchard under different agricultural practices. More specifically, the
ultimate aim was to reveal and compare the environmental impacts of using different
N fertilizer application techniques (uniform and VRA). Many environmental research
studies have focused on N application on several crops. This probably is due to the
fact that local over-fertilization may enhance nitrate leaching and thus decrease
ground water quality. Over fertilization may also induce NH3 volatilization and N2Ο
emissions leading to acidification and increased GHG emissions. An additional
motivation for studying the environmental effects of fertilization is the high cost of N
fertilizers. Furthermore, there is a need to investigate the magnitude of the impacts
induced from fertilizer usage compared to the impacts of other inputs in the system,
like the use of pesticides, the production phase of all the agrochemicals and the
energy consumption represented by the diesel use in the different agricultural
processes. Another objective was to suggest improvements and to detect research
needs. The goal was to perform a multiple impact category LCA following the ISO
standards for LCA 14040 and 14044 as close as possible.
280
The functional unit (FU) is a fundamental element in every LCA study. The
‘function’ in the sense of an LCA function means to quantitatively and qualitatively
specify the analyzed product. This is generally done by naming and quantifying the
qualitative and quantitative aspects of the function(s) along the questions of “what”,
of “how much”, of “how well”, and of “for how long” (Production Environmental
Footprint Guide, PEF, 2013). This reference or FU provides the quantitative aspect
(“how much”) to allow for comparability between different product systems. The
reference flow is the amount of product or activity required to fulfill the FU.
Typically, life cycle inventory (LCI) data rely on a chosen reference flow. Usually
agricultural datasets, i.e. crop products, are based on a mass reference of one
kilogram (1 kg) of output fresh product. However, the FU could be represented in the
inventory by the unit of land hectare (ha). Productivity per hectare is an important
parameter that influences the impact per unit of the product. Also, productivity is
related to the amounts of inputs that are used. Nevertheless, using hectare as FU,
productivity is not considered. According to Milà i Canals et al. (2006), a mass based
functional unit is adequate when only analyzing the agricultural stages of the life
cycle of fresh product for descriptive purposes.
In the present study the reference unit was defined as the 1 kg of pears,
unpackaged, at farm gate. This means that the LCA study is a cradle- to –gate study,
which means that includes all the processes until the pear fruit is harvested at the
farm. So, the “what”, is recently harvested pears of the cultivar Coscia from a pear
orchard located in Tirnavos, Central Greece. Since this particular cultivar, Coscia,
cannot be stored for long periods at refrigerators, the time period of the fruits being
consumable (“how long”) is limited to almost one month. After this time the ripening
phase of the fruits proceeds very fast to end up to wastes.
3 Results
All the emissions of substances to air, water and soil from the pear orchard
production phase (include all the inputs to the field) are represented by Pear Orchard
in the graph of Figure1. The pear production system is almost exclusively responsible
for the emissions in the Terrestrial ecotoxicity and Agricultural land occupation
impact categories. The Terrestrial ecotoxicity category include the emissions coming
from pesticides application and concerned emissions to the soil, while in the
Agricultural Land occupationcategory the impacts are due to the land use for specific
period of time. The Average fruit yield (20.3 t/ha) for the whole life span of the pear
orchard is smaller compared to the global average pear production. Thus, land
occupation is found to be 0.05 ha*year/ton of pears, justifying a high impact of
Agricultural land occupation in this pear study. Also Pear Orchard group covers a
substantial part of the Particulate matter formation due to NOx and NH3 and of
Climate Change due to N2O and CO2. These air emissions are all produced from the
use of fertiliser inputs in the orchard. Finally, in water depletion the negative
percentage represents the water irrigation pumped from the ground for the pear fruit
yield.
281
The diesel consumption in tractor operation, petrol consumption in transportation
and electricity use in irrigation are represented from the Operation in the graph. As it
is depicted mainly in Water Depletion impact category and consequently in
Particulate matter formation and Climate Change the operations show significant
contribution.
Concerning the background processes it seems that the agricultural machinery
production and the maintenance of all the equipment and machinery used, which are
included in the Capital goods, has an important contribution in the majority of the
impact categories. This result was confirmed by Audsley et al., (1997), who stated
that it is necessary to include not only the impacts derived from the use of the
machinery (mainly from fuel consumption), but also the impacts arising from the
production of the machines themselves. However, in the present study the
agricultural machinery production and maintenance have been higher than the
research done by Mila i Canals et al. (2006), where the proportional impacts of
machinery production were ascribed to the different operations on the basis of use
time as a proportion of the predicted useful life-time of the machine.
Fig.1. Processes contribution to the most significant impact categories
282
References
1. Ingrao, C., Matarazzo, A., Tricase, C., Clasadonte, M.T. and Huisingh, D. (2015)
Life Cycle Assessment for highlighting environmental hotspots in Sicilian peach
production systems. Journal of Cleaner Production, 92, 109-20.
2. Mila, I., Canals, L., Burni, G.M. and Cowell, S.J. (2006) Evaluation of the
environmental impacts of apple production using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA):
case study in New Zealand. Agriculture Ecosystems and Environment 114, 226-
38.
3. Liu, Y., Langer, V., Høgh-Jensen, H. and Egelyng, H. (2010) Life Cycle
Assessment of fossil energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in Chinese pear
production. Journal of Cleaner Production, 18, 1423-30.
283