Teodora Stillitano

Life cycle tools combined with multi-criteria and participatory methods for agricultural sustainability: Insights from a systematic and critical review

Life cycle (LC) methodologies have attracted a great interest in agricultural sustainability assessments, even if, at the same time, they have sometimes been criticized for making unrealistic assumptions and subjective choices. To cope with these weaknesses, Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and/or participatory methods can be used to balance and integrate different sustainability dimensions. The purpose of this study is to highlight how life cycle approaches were combined with MCDA and participatory methods to address agricultural sustainability in the published scientific literature. A systematic and critical review was developed, highlighting the following features: which multi-criterial and/or participatory methods have been associated with LC tools; how they have been integrated or complemented (methodological relationships); the intensity of the involvement of stakeholders (degree of participation); and which synergies have been achieved by combining the methods. The main typology of integration was represented by multi-criterial frameworks integrating LC evaluations. LC tools can provide MCDA studies with local and global information on how to reduce negative impacts and avoid burden shifts, while MCDA methods can help LC practitioners deal with subjective assumptions in an objective way, to take into consideration actors values and to overcome trade-offs among the different dimensions of sustainability. Considerations concerning the further development of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) have been identified as well.

Life Cycle Methodologies to Improve Agri-Food Systems Sustainability

The paper takes into account the sustainability issues linked to agri-food systems by deepening the so-called life cycle-based approaches as tools useful to characterize and quantify several impact typologies generated by all phases of a production process. To achieve the objectives of eco-compatibility, economic profitability and social well-being, the measurement of sustainability performances represents an essential requirement, as well as the need of increasingly innovative evaluation methods with holistic and all-embracing features. Even more so, in the evaluation of complex socio-environmental systems, like agricultural ones, uncertainty often arises and the quality of decision processes can be a high concern. Life Cycle Thinking (LCT), as conceptual framework, and its operative counterpart the Life Cycle Management (LCM) are characterized by a systemic approach useful to integrate sustainability priorities into all phases of production processes, by improving design, innovation and evaluation activities. LCM includes several analytical tools, more or less standardized or yet in working progress, which compose the so-called tool box including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), each one for the evaluation of the three different sustainability dimensions. This article aims to provide a brief overview of all life cycle methodologies by outlining the origin and evolution, the main features and potentiality of application in agri-food sector.

Harvesting system sustainability in Mediterranean olive cultivation

The mechanization of farming operation plays an important role in improving the profitability of the agricultural sector by increasing work productivity and reducing production costs. However, the new challenges of agriculture also include the environmental issues. The choice between different alternatives to perform a determined agricultural practice should be based on reliable information, considering technical, economic and environmental aspects. Olive growing represents the most important agricultural production in the Mediterranean Basin and its mechanization, particularly harvesting, could have major impacts on the sustainability of this production. This study aims at assessing various olive-harvesting scenarios, while considering technical, economic and environmental aspects in order to build a beta version of the olive-harvesting database. The proposed methodology called modular approach could represent a useful tool to apply in unitary process assessment in order to obtain a comprehensive database of the diverse agricultural operations. The methodology was based on Life Cycle Assessment and production cost analysis. Technical performance evaluation showed that the recorded work capacities varied between 5 tons of harvested olives per day when employing mechanical harvest aids and 18 tons per day when employing trunk shakers. The economic evaluation highlighted that the harvesting costs are variable as a function of the given cost type (costs per hour, costs per kg of harvested olives and costs per hectare). The LCA revealed that mechanically aided techniques were the most sustainable ones when the functional unit is considered as one harvesting hour, although this FU is not the most suitable unit for choosing the best environmental solution. The surface and production mass units are more appropriate FUs in comparative studies, although they are strictly linked to the work capacity. A significant variation in the environmental performances depended on the FUs and on the average yields when the FU represented one kg of harvested olives.

Eco-profiles and economic performances of a high-value fruit crop in southern Italy: a case study of bergamot (Citrus bergamia Risso)

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the environmental and economic sustainability of bergamot, a citrus crop considered very significant for its long-standing peculiarities linked to a strong socio-economic role, a meaningful rooting in territorial heritage and an important function in environmental and landscape terms. A comparison between conventional and organic cropping systems has been carried out by means of life cycle assessment and life cycle costing tools in order to assess the impacts of different management practices. The results show positive performances of the organic production system, from both environmental and economic points of view. Furthermore, compared to similar studies of other citrus crops in the same area, bergamot cultivation can represent an economically sustainable choice for farmers with lower environmental impacts.

Evaluating the Environmental, Economic, and Social Sustainability of Agro-Food Systems Through Life Cycle Approaches

Abstract The topic of agro-food sustainability has been faced extensively, over the years, by researchers from different disciplines. The distinctive features of agro-food systems, in comparison with other fields, request necessarily a significant knowledge effort aimed to define new methodologies, by moving towards a holistic evaluation of problems. The life cycle conceptual framework and its operative and methodological instruments can offer useful guidelines and practical recommendations to address private and public subjects on sustainable pathways. This chapter provides an overview of life cycle tools: life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, and social life cycle assessment by highlighting their meanings and principal characteristics and tracing a brief review of applications in agro-food contexts.

Psychosocial risk factors’ impact pathway for social life cycle assessment: an application to citrus life cycles in South Italy

PurposeSocial life cycle assessment (SLCA) was the last tool to be developed within the framework of life cycle thinking, and since the beginning, there has been a struggle to reach a consensus on a standardized methodology. In fact, many different methodological proposals have been published, diverging on many points. The main difference lies in the epistemological position underlying these proposals. The aim of this study is to propose an impact pathway for assessing the social consequences of a product’s life cycle—the psychosocial risk factor (PRF) impact pathway. The epistemological posture of this methodology is post-positivist, because it is based on an objective assessment of the possible consequences of the functioning of the life cycle, and therefore, it is in line with environmental LCA.MethodsPossible impacts on workers’ health were measured in terms of risks, i.e., using the odds ratio, a statistical measure of the intensity of the association between two variables. Odds ratios explaining the relationships between working conditions and health troubles were retrieved from previously published empirical studies. These statistical relationships were used to build an impact pathway that links the product’s life cycle to possible social impacts in a quantifiable and probabilistic way.Results and discussionThe PRF impact pathway was applied to citriculture in the Calabria region of South Italy. The results showed that the life cycle, from cradle to farm gate, of industrial oranges exposed workers to a risk for about 43,088xa0h against 54,110xa0h for the clementine life cycle. In general, musculoskeletal disorders are the highest concern for both products, followed by osteoarthritis, disability, and cardiovascular diseases. For all impact categories, the industrial oranges’ life cycle showed the best performance, mainly due to the shorter duration of a single operation. The results are generalizable to other evaluation contexts.ConclusionsThe PRF impact pathway was applied to the stakeholders group “workers,” but can be extended to other typologies of actor, such as consumers and local residents. Further, it allowed for an objective assessment of the impacts principally linked to the functioning of the citruses’ life cycles, by quantifying and qualifying the hours of work, and can be extended to other fields of application.

The assessment of hazelnut mechanical harvesting productivity

Hazelnut cultivation represents a new opportunity for Calabrian mountainous and sloping areas (Southern Italy), where no alternative fruit crops, except forestry, could be settled. In this Region, hazelnut production doubled during the last fifty years, inciting the farmers to introduce mechanization in cropping practices such as harvesting in order to increase productivity and decrease production costs. Indeed, harvesting is currently one of the most expensive processes of the productive cycle, moreover to be time consuming if carried out manually. Mechanization degree depends significantly on the terrain topography: in sloping areas, rakes are often associated to aspirating machines to harvest the fallen fruit, while the employment of harvesting machines from the ground prevails in flat areas. In this context, the present paper aims to assess technical and economic aspects of harvesting operation, using a harvester from the ground model ‘Jolly 2800’ (GF s.r.l., Italy). Particularly, for technical purposes data about operational working time as well as working productivity were collected according to CIOSTA requirements, in two harvesting sites, whereas, for mechanical harvesting economic evaluation, an estimation model was applied to calculate machinery cost per hour. Moreover, the cost per kg of hazelnut in shell and the average cost per hectare were estimated also. The obtained results show a working productivity of 0.065 ha h op in the first harvesting site, while it was equal to 0.022 ha h op in the second one. Concerning the average cost per hectare, the second harvesting site showed the worst economic performances, with 550.76 € ha against 182.54 € ha obtained in the first one.

L’approccio Life Cycle Costing (LCC) come strumento di supporto alle decisioni: la valutazione economico-finanziaria di un impianto di produzione del miele in Calabria

The aim of the research is to contribute to the experimentation of methodologies for cost effectiveness and economic sustainability assessment concerning investments in agri-food sector, and testing the applicability of the method to supply chains of minor produces. Elaborations have been made integrating Life Cycle Costing (LCC) methodology, that allows to analyse in detail outflows linked to every phase of lifespan investment (planning, implementation, management and disposal), and financial analysis through specific indicators consenting to formulate evaluations of economic sustainability. Results show that the integration of these methodologies can be a useful tool to support investment choices, but also to improve management performances, from an economic perspective, of actors operating in supply chains of minor produces. The application to the case study highlights how integrated LCC methods can be exported and applied to similar supply chains.