ORGANIC POTATO PRODUCTION: A STEP TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE (LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT BASED STUDY)

Abstract

Potato as staple vegetable has a significant influence towards the global target of food security. However,
its production is also correlated to environmental burden via the processes like fertilization, crop protection and the
production of electricity for irrigation. Although organic production is known to reduce the impacts of fertilizer as well
as other agro-chemicals due to their non-usage, there is a need to assess its overall impact in the light of its related
processes with respect to transportation of manure and higher water requirements. Therefore, a cradle to farm gate type
Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has been used to quantify its impacts in terms of the chosen indicators. Taking
one hectare of land under potato cultivation as the functional unit, the Sima Pro version 9.0.0 along with CML 2 baseline
2000 approach have been used. The results highlight sowing and irrigation as the most critical processes that harm the
environment. The findings of normalization results revealed that the marine aquatic ecotoxicity category was the greatest
contributor to overall environmental impact. The results were further strengthened by substance contribution analysis
which shows that carbon dioxide followed by nitrate emissions to air, water and soil was the most significant substances,
accounting for 65.36% and 54.01% respectively.