Promoting Sustainable Agriculture: Impacts of Innovative Soil Management Approaches on Human Health and Ecosystems

Abstract

Soil use and its proper management are key elements of sustainable development. However, given the complexity of the issue, it is necessary to address it using an interdisciplinary approach. The proposed work aims to analyze the consequences, in terms of damage assessment, of two different soil management systems of a cereal crop through the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. One system follows a traditional approach and the other utilizes a Decision Support System (DSS). The long-term impacts on human health, ecosystems, and resource availability are calculated by employing the ReCiPe 2016 endpoint method. The results show notable reductions in resource use and environmental impacts with DSS, with a 41% decrease in damage to human health, a 24% reduction in ecosystem damage, and a 23% reduction in resource use. Hence, implementing new technologies and new management strategies in agriculture can lead to more sustainable management choices and can avoid long-term burdens compared to a traditional approach.

Keywords

• soil management
• life cycle assessment
• decision support system
• human health
• ecosystem
• endpoint damage assessment