Grain production management to reduce global warming potential under financial constraints and time value of money using evolutionary game theory

Abstract

ABSTRACT With the increase of global warming, grain producers should consider emission reduction in their production activities to move towards sustainable development. Besides the challenges of environmental sustainability, grain producers in developing countries face budget constraints for promoting their sustainability level. Moreover, sustainability strategies made by grain producers are not stable and are continually changing over time. This study proposes an evolutionary game model to investigate the evolutionary behaviours of a population of financially constrained producers in Iran who gain financial support from one dominant distributor based on their sustainability investment in the long term. This study develops a one-population evolutionary game model to investigate different strategies of producers towards sustainability, considering the time value of money. Moreover, using SimaPro 8.0.3 software, the impacts of non-renewable and renewable electricity consumption on global warming potential are evaluated through life cycle assessment for grain production. Results reveal that using biomass as the source of electricity instead of natural gas in the grain production reduces contribution to global warming potential from 269 kg CO2-eq to 18 kg CO2-eq. This study provides stakeholders who have environmental and social concerns (i.e. grain producers and agricultural production management entities) with insights into keeping their supply chain sustainable.