Impact assessment for LCAs involving agricultural production

LCA has been developed primarily for industrial production systems. Application to agricultural systems requires systematic application of existing methodology and new methodological developments. Conventional approaches can obscure potential options for improving the environmental performance of systems involving agricultural production due to use of restricted system boundaries, incomplete assessment of impacts, and exclusion of ancillaries from the analysis. For use of nutrients such as phosphorus, it is proposed that Impact Assessment should be based on the quantity dispersed after use rather than on the input to the productive system. Eventually, the impacts associated with depletion should be based on technological or thermodynamic assessment of concentration for reuse, but this approach requires further theoretical development.