ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND LIFE CYCLE ANALYSIS OF ORGANIC AND CONVENTIONAL OLIVE GROVES IN THE MESSARA VALLEY, CRETE, GREECE.

Summary

Environmental Impacts of agricultural activities have to be assessed in order to address cultural practices and the type of farming that are best suited to avoid the trade-off between the Ecology and the Economy.
Furthermore, this study, comparing the environmental impacts with the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of Organic and Conventional olive oil production, is proposing to consider the relationship between the Energy Efficiency and the environmental impacts, notably the Climate Change (Global Warming contribution through Greenhouse Gas emission).
The LCA is used to take into account the impacts of the production system from the Cradle (input production) to the Farm gate (final farm product) and considers 7 environmental impacts potential categories: Global Warming, Acidification, Eutrophication, Biodiversity, Erosion, Resource depletion, Ground water depletion. The study also assesses the Energy efficiency of both systems.
The results show a clear difference between organic and conventional production, namely a two-fold improvement of the energy efficiency in the organic production. Even if the differences are reduced when the results are calculated on the yield rather than the area, the organic methods have a far smaller contribution to Global warming, Eutrophication, Biodiversity loss, Soil loss, Groundwater depletion and Energy use whereas, the Acidification potential is comparable in both cases.
The study recommends encouraging some of the cultural practices that are used in the organic farming methods in order to reduce the burden of agriculture on the local and global ecology as well as the natural resources.