The environmental impact of oilseed rape: assessment and methodological limitations

This article provides an overview of the impact of oilseed rape on the environment for water, air, soil, and biodiversity. It also questions the concepts and methods used for this evaluation. Oilseed rape has specific characteristics, which may be positive negative or mixed according to the different indicators used for the environmental assessment. But these effects do not allow us to judge the sustainability of the crop itself, because environmental impacts generally result from processes operating at spatial scales (landscape, watershed) and time scales (cropping systems) larger than the field and the crop cycle. This analysis shows that methods designed for the assessment of a single crop or product, like the life cycle analysis, are of poor interest for such topics.