Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental Impact Analysis of Agricultural Production Systems
A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472). This special issue belongs to the section "Ecosystem, Environment and Climate Change in Agriculture".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 January 2026 | Viewed by 27
Special Issue Editors
Interests: life cycle assessment; agriculture; food; nutrition; crops; livestock; carbon footprint; optimization
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Agriculture is a leading contributor to many environmental issues, including 35–40% of terrestrial land occupation, 70–90% of freshwater consumption, 95% of nitrogen pollution, and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. There are large differences in the impacts of different agri-food products (e.g., over 50-fold higher for some animal sources of protein compared to some plant-based protein sources), therefore production and consumption patterns are critical for sustainability. In order to assess the diverse environmental impacts associated with agricultural products, a systems-level, multi-criteria assessment method, such as life cycle assessment (LCA), is required.
LCA is used to assess a variety of environmental impacts (including, but not limited to, greenhouse gas emissions, eutrophying emissions, acidifying emissions, land use, water use, and energy use) throughout the life cycle (or supply chain) of a product or service. LCA and other associated life cycle thinking techniques are used to assess the relative sustainability of different product alternatives, management techniques, or production pathways.
The use of such methods is imperative for making informed sustainability decisions and avoiding burden-shifting between different types of impacts or across supply chain stages. We therefore invite contributions to this Special Issue that focus on LCA or other related impact assessment methods applied to agricultural products.
Dr. Nicole Bamber
Dr. Vivek Arulnathan
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agriculture is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- life cycle assessment
- life cycle thinking
- impact assessment
- sustainability
- environment
- agriculture
- agri-food
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