Life Cycle Assessment Applied in Rice Production and Residue Management

Abstract

Rice production can be carried out using a wide set of cultivation techniques. Different land preparation, crop establishment, crop care, harvesting, and straw management techniques lead to different environmental impacts. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a reliable tool for assessing the environmental load of agricultural processes and can be used to compute or simulate energy balance and environmental impact categories such as climate change, ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, and marine eutrophication. This chapter comprises the following sections: (1) LCA overview and application in agriculture, (2) case studies of LCA to identify the best rice straw management practices, and (3) summary and suggestions for further applications.