Economic and Environmental Trade-Offs in Carbon Footprint Reduction Strategies: A Farm-Level Optimization Model for Intensive Crop Production

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a novel farm-level optimization model integrating LCA and multi-objective programming, useful for agricultural systems analysis.

🏢実務担当者:Offers insights into optimizing crop mixes for lower carbon footprints, though the production trade-off requires careful consideration.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the need for financial support mechanisms to enable farmers to adopt low-carbon practices without compromising food security.

Intensive agricultural production contributes significantly to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for between 10 and 12% of global anthropogenic emissions, at a time when the agricultural sector is facing increasing pressure to adapt to ever-stricter environmental regulations. This study develops and applies a multi-objective Goal Programming model to identify the optimal mix of crops and management practices that simultaneously minimize the carbon footprint and maximize productivity, at the level of a 300-hectare (ha) model agricultural system in Romania. The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology, in accordance with ISO 14040/14044 standards and Ecoinvent 3.8 emission factors, was applied to nine crops distributed across three soil types, within four management scenarios, over an annual planning horizon. The unit of measurement used is a ton of CO2 equivalent per agricultural system. The results show that the optimized configuration achieves near-zero total carbon emissions (0.33 t CO2eq for the entire farm), reduces synthetic nitrogen inputs to 35.7% of the limit set by the EU Nitrates Directive, and generates water savings of 48%. However, these environmental gains entail a 52.9% production trade-off relative to the maximum target of 3000 tons, highlighting a Pareto-optimal structural conflict between climate and food security objectives. The sensitivity analysis identifies the nitrogen emission factor and crop yield as the most influential parameters. The results confirm the technical feasibility of the European Green Deal targets through systematic mathematical optimization, while also demonstrating that achieving economic parity requires policy support of 110–165 EUR/ha/year.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture16101095first seen 2026-05-20 05:03:48 · last seen 2026-06-15 04:52:11