Evaluation of the environmental aspects in wheat production

Evaluation of the environmental aspects in wheat production

Environmental sustainability is one of the main issues in production systems. The environmental impacts for dryland and irrigated wheat production systems has been investigated by life cycle assessment method. The inputs and outputs for both systems were gathered by questionnaire method from the farmers in Chardavol, Ilam, Iran. The boundary of the farm gate system to the door of the Chardavol Flour Factory was considered to be investigated. The values of the environmental indicators were calculated based on CML-IA baseline model. The effects of different factors on the environmental indicators were determined in SimaPro Software. The irrigated wheat production system had lower environmental impacts than those of dryland wheat farms. Among the environmental indicators, marine water ecotoxicity had the most effective one in both dryland and irrigated farms. The nitrogen input in both dryland and irrigated farms had the highest effect on all environmental indicators of both wheat production systems, except for acidification potential and eutrophication indicators which were more affected by the direct emissions in wheat production farms.