Environmental Impact Assessment of Maize Production in Northern India

Abstract

Agricultural production has been recognized as a one of the major contributors to environmental degradation and a source of several forms of pollution that have far-reaching consequences for ecosystems, water supplies, soil quality, air quality, and human health. Maize cultivation has also placed a major environmental cost, particularly when considering resource utilization and the environmental impacts of fertilizer, insecticides, and electricity production. With the goal of measuring the impacts and identifying the major environment hotspot, a life cycle assessment was performed using the cradle-to-farm-gate approach to evaluate the environmental effects of maize cultivation. The environmental impact of the inputs and outputs studied by life cycle assessment was estimated using the Sima Pro version 9.0 and the CML 2 baseline 2000 technique. According to the findings, the fertilization phase had the most detrimental influence on the ecosystem, followed by the harvesting period. The current research makes a number of recommendations for agricultural practices to be used in conjunction with maize production, based on agri-environmental indicator scores and the correlations between them for eco-friendly maize production.