Life cycle assessment of fossil energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in Chinese pear production

Summary

An environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) was performed in China to investigate environmental consequences of the life cycle of pears in terms of fossil energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The assessment identified activities that contributed significantly to pears’ environmental impacts from the cradle to the point of sale. Cultivation was identified as having the greatest greenhouse gas emissions in pear production chains, followed by the process of storage and transportation. The contribution from fossil energy use differed in the production chains since environmental performance does not follow the farming system (organic-conventional) but is co-determined by topography and thus machine use, by market demands to seasonality of products and thus the need for storage, and by local farming practices including manure management. The LCA could be used to guide selection of agricultural inputs with the aim of reducing environmental impacts. The points of selection include choices to make like substitution of the traditional storage systems with efficient controlled atmosphere (CA) storage systems, mitigation of green house gas (GHG) emissions with anaerobic manure treatment conversion from the conventional to organic farming, and reduction of mechanical cultivation.