ABSTRACT

Agricultural crop production can generate significant residues and their management is generally a disposal problem. Composting can be a solution. It is essentially an efficient bioconversion technique to process organic wastes (manure, food, crop and forestry residues, solid digestate) into humus-like substances destined to different uses (soil amendment, organic fertilization, plant nursery substrates). Life Cycle Assessment, Energy Analysis, and Life Cost Costing were used to perform a cross-analysis aimed to assess the environmental, economic, and energy sustainability of some procurement systems of compostable materials (bulking agents and agricultural crop residues) to be allocated to composting on the farm. The procurement systems were characterized by different mechanization levels in order to explore the possible scenarios related to the availability of vehicles within the farm and increasing transport distances. Our findings underline that the most sustainable option for the environment it was not often the most cost-effective choice. Therefore, the cross-analysis of these relevant data sets allowed us to detail the different operative steps and guide the procurement system choice toward those showing the best compromise for both the environment and farmers (cheaper, with no or low impactful).

摘要

农业作物生产会产生大量残留物，对其进行管理通常是一个处置问题。堆肥可以解决。从本质上讲，它是一种有效的生物转化技术，可将有机废物（粪便，食物，农作物和林业残留物，固体消化物）加工成腐殖质样物质，以用于不同用途（土壤改良剂，有机肥，植物苗圃基质）。使用生命周期评估，能源分析和生命成本成本计算进行交叉分析，旨在评估分配给堆肥的可堆肥材料（散装剂和农作物残留物）的某些采购系统的环境，经济和能源可持续性在农场。采购系统的特点是机械化程度不同，以便探讨与农场内车辆的可用性和运输距离增加有关的可能情况。我们的发现强调，对于环境而言，最可持续的选择通常并非最具成本效益的选择。因此，对这些相关数据集的交叉分析使我们能够详细说明不同的操作步骤，并指导采购系统的选择，以选择对环境和农民都表现出最佳折衷的方法（更便宜，影响很小或影响很小）。