Environmental life cycle assessment of corn production in tropical regions

Corn growing is an important cultural and traditional system in the Iran that has considerable environmental impacts. This study was conducted to determine the environmental effects of corn production using life cycle assessment methodology. In the present study, the data have been collected from face-to-face interviews and completing a questionnaire among corn farmers in Ilam province of Iran, in 2021. The functional unit for analysis was defined as one ton of corn produced in the region. As a result, energy efficiency, energy productivity, net energy and specific energy were equal to 4.41, 0.20 kg MJ-1, 675,379.84 MJ ha-1 and 4.88 MJ kg-1 respectively. Direct, indirect, renewable and non-renewable energies was 61.59, 38.41, 16.03 and 83.97%, respectively. In this study, the amount of global warming potential per ton of product produced is estimated to be 4747,505 kg CO2 equivalent. After normalization and weighting, the highest environmental pollutants are related to the marine aquatic ecotoxicity index with 225,273 kg 1,4-dichlorobenzene equivalent and the lowest pollutants are related to the depletion of ozone layer 1,19 x 10-5 kg CFC-11 equivalent. Result showed that chemical fertilizers and electricity led to the highest contaminating emissions.