Application of LCA to agricultural products: 1. Core methodological issues; 2. Supplement to the LCA guide; 3. Methodological background

Industrial Ecolog

An environmental yardstick in farm economic modelling of future pesticide use: the case of arable farming.

The integration of a new environmental yardstick for pesticide use in an economic farm model designed to monitor the environmental-economic interplay under changing price and policy conditions is discussed. The model is used to compare the effects of two control systems for pesticide use in arable farming in the Netherlands: the governmental system focusing on the amount of active ingredients used per hectare; and an alternative based on the detailed environmental criteria of the yardstick. The application for arable farming on a sandy soil indicates that, in the context of the national pesticides use reduction objectives for the year 2000, the economic effects of the two systems are similar. The environmental implications are far better represented by the yardstick, however

Application of LCA to agricultural products: 1. Core methodological issues; 2. Supplement to the LCA guide; 3. Methodological background

Industrial Ecolog

An index method to evaluate growers’ pesticide use for identifying on-farm innovations and effective alternative pest management strategies: a case study of winegrape in Madera County, California*

Winegrape is an important perennial crop in California, USA. Each year California winegrape farming consumes about 20 million kilograms of pesticides that have been a pollutant source to the fresh water systems of the state. The variation of pesticide use among winegrape growers has been significant. It has been observed that some growers have developed effective ways to reduce pesticide use, yet control pests efficiently to ensure harvest. Identification of the growers with low and high pesticide use is very helpful to extension programs that aim on reducing pesticide environmental risk. In this study, an index approach is proposed to quantitatively measure pesticide use intensity at grower level. An integrated pesticide use index is developed by taking pesticide quantity and toxicity into account. An additive formula and a multiplying formula were used to calculate the pesticide use index, i.e., PUI and PUIM. It was found that both PUI and PUIM were capable of identifying the low and high pesticide users while PUI was slightly more conservative than PUIM. All pesticides used in California winegrape farming were taken into account for calculating the indices. Madera County, one of the largest winegrape producers in California, was taken as an example to test the proposed approach. In year 2000, among the total 208 winegrape growers, 28 with PUI≤10 and 34 with 10<PUI≤20 were identified as low pesticide users who were characterized with both low quantity and low toxicity of pesticide use. Most of the growers had small-sized vineyards, i.e., one field and small planted areas. Furthermore, they had very low pesticide use intensity, used only 1–2 types of pesticides (mainly fungicides), applied few pesticides (1–3 only), and emphasized the use of low toxicity compounds. Meanwhile, 19 growers with PUI>60, identified as high pesticide users, had large-sized vineyards, i.e., more fields and large planted areas. They used all types of pesticides and many compounds, which indicated that their pest controls heavily depended on pesticides rather than on-farm management. Through the case study, the proposed approach proved to be useful for analyzing the growers’ pesticide use intensities and interpreting their pesticide use behaviors, which led to a new start point for further investigation of searching ways to reduce pesticide environmental risk