Approaches to Environmental Impact Assessment in Agriculture

Environmental issues such as climate change, global warming and pollution and depletion of natural resources require that the sources of these effects i.e. agriculture, services and industry be considered. Methods and techniques have been developed for assessing these direct and indirect impacts. The present paper introduces and describes the relevant methods and techniques. Then the paper classifies the methods into three classes: input related (e.g. Environmental risk mapping, Multiple linear programming (LP) approach and eco-point), emission related (e.g. Life cycle assessment and Sustainability of energy crops) and system state related (Multi- agent system, the farmer sustainability index, agro-environmental indicators and Environmental impact assessment). Finally, with regards to stakeholders and the type of agro-ecosystem, some actions are recommended for combination of approaches in environmental impact assessment of agriculture.