Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of sugar beet production in various production systems in Khorasan

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a method that evaluates all environmental effects of a product during its life cycle. The objective of this study was to introduce LCA to Iranian scientific community and to use it in assessment of environmental impact of different production systems of sugar beet in former Khorasan province, west of Iran, compared to Swiss condition. The data were gathered regarding materials and processes from traditional, semi-mechanized and mechanized production systems in 26 regions of 11 geographic areas of Khorasan (current North, Razavi and South Khorasan provinces), the inventory analysis. Then, all the resources (inputs) and environmental emissions (outputs) were quantified under environmental impact category. The results indicated that there is a significant gap between Khorasan and Swiss (optimum situation) in terms of environmental impacts per each ton of sugar beet production (up to 40 times in some of environmental impact category). Moreover this study demonstrated that mechanized sugar beet production system is more environmental friendly regarding to depletion of non-renewable energy sources, global warming, eutrophication, photochemical oxidation, acidification, land use and ozone layer depletion among various systems of sugar beet production in Khorasan. Contribution analysis indicated that irrigation had the greatest role in creating environmental impacts. Climatic condition of this region and the existence of drought led to spend a lot of energy for irrigation. Providing this energy causes high environmental impacts due to the dependence on fossil fuels.