Social Life Cycle Assessment of Major Staple Grain Crops in China

Abstract

The agricultural sustainable development for human well-being considers food security and ecological health as well as people’s socio-economic conditions. Nowadays, most of the holistic assessments of agricultural sustainability, mainly focus on food production and ecological consequences, relatively lacking analysis from the socio-economic perspective. In this context, this study constructs an agricultural social life cycle assessment model based on the guidelines of UNEP to assess the social and economic impacts on the three major staple grain crops in China, including maize, rice and wheat. The assessment model aims to analyze effects of stakeholders containing farmer, agricultural value chain actors, consumer, rural areas, society, and impact categories including high-quality growth of agriculture, a comfortable life in rural areas, the prosperity of rural people. The data is mainly from national statistical databases and representative industry databases. The impact assessment adopts social risk and social impact as quantitative characterization methods, and Analytical Hierarchical Process to obtain weights. The results show that: among the three major grain crops, farmers are the most important factors for stakeholders, and agricultural industrial development has the greatest potential negative impacts on society; maize has the most positive impacts on agricultural sustainable development in China.