Purpose

Following the urgency to curb environmental impacts across all sectors globally, this is the first life cycle assessment of different wine grape farming practices suitable for commercial conventional production in South Africa, aiming at better understanding the potentials to reduce adverse effects on the environment and on human health.

Methods

An attributional life cycle assessment was conducted on eight different scenarios that reduce the inputs of herbicides and insecticides compared against a business as usual (BAU) scenario. We assess several impact categories based on ReCiPe, namely global warming potential, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, terrestrial toxicity, freshwater toxicity, marine toxicity, human carcinogenic toxicity and human non-carcinogenic toxicity, human health and ecosystems. A water footprint assessment based on the AWARE method accounts for potential impacts within the watershed.

Results and discussion

Results show that in our impact assessment, more sustainable farming practices do not always outperform the BAU scenario, which relies on synthetic fertiliser and agrochemicals. As a main trend, most of the impact categories were dominated by energy requirements of wine grape production in an irrigated vineyard, namely the usage of electricity for irrigation pumps and diesel for agricultural machinery. The most favourable scenario across the impact categories provided a low diesel usage, strongly reduced herbicides and the absence of insecticides as it applied cover crops and an integrated pest management. Pesticides and heavy metals contained in agrochemicals are the main contributors to emissions to soil that affected the toxicity categories and impose a risk on human health, which is particularly relevant for the manual labour-intensive South African wine sector. However, we suggest that impacts of agrochemicals on human health and the environment are undervalued in the assessment. The 70% reduction of toxic agrochemicals such as Glyphosate and Paraquat and the 100% reduction of Chlorpyriphos in vineyards hardly affected the model results for human and ecotoxicity. Our concerns are magnified by the fact that manual labour plays a substantial role in South African vineyards, increasing the exposure of humans to these toxic chemicals at their workplace.

Conclusions

A more sustainable wine grape production is possible when shifting to integrated grape production practices that reduce the inputs of agrochemicals. Further, improved water and related electricity management through drip irrigation, deficit irrigation and photovoltaic-powered irrigation is recommendable, relieving stress on local water bodies, enhancing drought-preparedness planning and curbing CO₂ emissions embodied in products.

中文翻译：

---

通过LCA探索葡萄园的可持续发展潜力？南非农业实践的证据

目的

由于迫切需要遏制全球所有部门的环境影响，这是对适合于南非商业常规生产的不同酿酒葡萄种植实践的首次生命周期评估，旨在更好地了解减少对环境和人类不利影响的潜力健康。

方法

在八个不同的方案下进行了生命周期归因评估，与“照常营业”方案相比，这些方案减少了除草剂和杀虫剂的投入。我们基于ReCiPe评估了几种影响类别，即全球变暖潜能，陆地酸化，淡水富营养化，陆地毒性，淡水毒性，海洋毒性，人类致癌毒性和人类非致癌毒性，人类健康和生态系统。基于AWARE方法的水足迹评估考虑了流域内的潜在影响。

结果和讨论

结果表明，在我们的影响评估中，更具可持续性的耕作方法并不总是优于BAU情景，因为BAU情景依赖于合成肥料和农用化学品。作为主要趋势，大多数影响类别受灌溉葡萄园中酿酒葡萄的能源需求所支配，即对灌溉泵的电力使用和对农业机械的柴油的使用。在所有影响类别中，最有利的情况是柴油用量低，除草剂大大减少，而且由于杀虫剂覆盖作物并进行了病虫害综合治理，因此没有杀虫剂。农用化学品中所含的农药和重金属是导致土壤排放的主要因素，这些排放影响了毒性类别并给人类健康带来了风险，这与手工劳动密集型的南非葡萄酒行业特别相关。但是，我们建议在评估中低估农药对人类健康和环境的影响。葡萄园中有毒农药（例如草甘膦和百草枯）减少70％，毒死ri减少100％，几乎不会影响模型对人和生态毒性的结果。在南非的葡萄园中，体力劳动扮演着重要的角色，这加剧了我们的担忧，这增加了人类在工作场所接触这些有毒化学物质的机会。葡萄园中有毒农药（例如草甘膦和百草枯）减少70％，毒死ri减少100％，几乎不会影响模型对人和生态毒性的结果。在南非的葡萄园中，体力劳动发挥着重要作用，这加剧了我们的担忧，这增加了人类在工作场所接触这些有毒化学物质的机会。葡萄园中有毒农药（如草甘膦和百草枯）减少了70％，毒死s（Chlorpyriphos）减少了100％，几乎没有影响模型对人类和生态毒性的结果。在南非的葡萄园中，体力劳动扮演着重要的角色，这加剧了我们的担忧，这增加了人类在工作场所接触这些有毒化学物质的机会。

结论

当转向减少农用化学品投入的综合葡萄生产方式时，可以实现更具可持续性的酿酒葡萄生产。此外，建议通过滴灌，亏缺灌溉和光伏灌溉改善水和相关的电力管理，减轻当地水体的压力，加强干旱准备计划并遏制产品中的CO ₂排放。