Abstract
Due to increased awareness of the current and future issues with the environment, sustainable development has become a well-known concept and goal in the last decades. Based on this idea, organic agriculture is now fairly generalized in many farms and grape processing factories. Life cycle assessment (LCA) represents a valuable and standardized technique to evaluate how sustainable a crop can become, determining the potential impacts that the complete-life product causes on the environment and on the management/conservation of resources. Although LCA can be applied to any product, this work focusses on organic grapevine crops as the subject of study, in order to improve energy and water efficiency and minimizing issues such as the use of pesticides. This paper, collecting primary data from three Spanish grape processing factories, quantifies the reduction of the overall impact related to the avoidance of artificial irrigation, amounting to 10%, and the saving of resources (− 4.3 kg oil eq. per ha) due to the replacement of chemical fertilisers with animal manure. On the other hand, the use of manure has shown some controversy from an environmental point of view as it contributes to global warming, resulting in an increase in the total impact of the organic vineyard. As predictable, the application of conventional practices as well as the use of water for irrigation could both result in a higher overall yield, and in a contemporary growth of environmental impacts; a discussion about the quantification of this aspect is also inserted.
Highlights
The term sustainable agriculture refers to the agricultural sector based on understanding of ecosystem services that consider all the relationships between organisms and their environment (Gold 1999)
The results indicate that fine particulate matter formation (FPMF) category is the one with the greatest responsibility for the impact, around 40% of the total, followed by human toxicity (HT) and global warming (GW)
This study was designed to assess the effect that some biological practices have on the total environmental impact of the vineyards
Summary
The term sustainable agriculture refers to the agricultural sector based on understanding of ecosystem services that consider all the relationships between organisms and their environment (Gold 1999). Amongst the many practices that comprise sustainable agriculture, one of the most significant is organic agriculture (Falk 2013). It is defined as a “system aiming at producing food with minimal harm to ecosystems, animals or humans” (Seufert et al 2012), avoiding or minimizing the use of synthetically compounded fertilisers, pesticides, growth regulators and relying upon crop residues, animal and green manures, and mineral-bearing rocks to maintain soil productivity (USDA 1980) to a maximum extent. Organic agricultural practices are applied in the production both of food and beverage, and, amongst the latter, grape processing factories represent one of the most significant and promising sectors. Even if organic, the production of grape processed products, as well as all the anthropogenic activities, is not free of several environmental loads
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
