Life Cycle Assessment of Thai Hom Mali Rice to Support the Policy Decision on Organic Farming Area Expansion

Rattanawan Mungkung,Shabbir H Gheewala,Saruda Sitthikitpanya,Sarocha Dangsiri

doi:10.3390/su12156003

Abstract

Thailand has a strategic national policy to increase organic rice farming. This study firstly applied Life Cycle Assessment for evaluating the quantitative environmental impacts at the regional and national levels to facilitate the national policy decision on the expansion of organic rice cultivation areas. The impact categories of interest included global warming, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, terrestrial ecotoxicity, and freshwater ecotoxicity, and the life cycle impact assessment method applied was ReCiPe. The results showed that the life cycle environmental impacts from organic rice cultivation in the nine provinces in the North were lower than those from the 12 provinces in the Northeast, due mainly to the higher yields and lower use of fertilizers in the former. The methane emissions in the North (11,147 kg CO2e/ha) were similar to those in the Northeast (11,378 kg CO2e/ha). However, nitrous oxide emissions in the Northeast were higher than in the North due to the higher amounts of fertilizer used. If Thailand expands the rice farming by 50% in the North and by 50% in the Northeast, the greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced from 11,400 to 11,100 kg CO2e/ha, but the impacts of terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, terrestrial ecotoxicity, and freshwater ecotoxicity could be increased by 0.0257 kg PO4e (95%), 0.508 kg 1,4-DBe (53%), and 33.1 kg 1,4-DBe (17%), respectively. To reduce the global warming as well as other environmental impacts, Thailand should expand rice farming areas to the North. This information could be useful for supporting the policy decisions on which areas the organic rice farming should be expanded in to minimize the potential life cycle environmental impacts.

Highlights

The World Food Summit Plan of Action has made a commitment on sustainable agriculture using appropriate technologies, such as organic farming to promote agro-ecosystem health, sustainable use of water and soil, and food security [1]
This work carried out an analysis of the national policy of expanding organic rice cultivation areas by assessing the cumulative environmental performance of organic rice at the regional and national levels
The system approach and quantitative life cycle environmental impacts resulting from the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study were primarily introduced to support the policy decisions in Thailand

Summary

Introduction

The World Food Summit Plan of Action has made a commitment on sustainable agriculture using appropriate technologies, such as organic farming to promote agro-ecosystem health, sustainable use of water and soil, and food security [1]. In 2018, there were 186 countries involved in organic farming, and total organic agricultural land expanded widely to 71.5 million hectares, especially in Europe and Asia, where the agricultural areas increased by about 9%. The increase in organic agriculture promoted high values of the organic products with 96.7 billion euros for total consumption and 12.8 euros per capita consumption [2]. In Asia, the area used for organic agriculture is 6.5 million hectares, and the key crop is organic rice, representing 41% of the total organic cereal area [3]. In terms of organic agricultural area, Thailand was ranked seventh, and second in terms of production quantity. Thailand has the largest concentration of rice growers certified through United States Department of Agriculture [4]

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