Environmental Impact and Carbon Footprint Assessment of Taiwanese Agricultural products

• Main Authors: Ming-Hsiu Chung, 鍾明修
• Other Authors: 胡憲倫
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/5589s7

碩士 === 國立臺北科技大學 === 環境工程與管理研究所 === 102 === Greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions have been increasing year by year in the last few decades, which results in global warming. Among the GHGs, carbon dioxide (CO2) has been identified as the most notorious one. There are evidences showing that the global warming leads to rising sea levels, ecological damage and reduce agricultural grain harvesting problems. Furthermore, population explosion will not just greatly increase the demand on food, which also leads to increases the greenhouse gas emissions. Is is because the GWP (Global Warming Potential) of agricultural related GHGs, such as methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) are much higher than that of carbon dioxide. 　　The purpose of this study is to assess the environmental impact and carbon footprints of Taiwanese agricultural products, including organic rice, tea, organic scallions and pears from Yilan County. Environmental impacts were assessed by using SimaPro version 8.0.2 and IMPACT2002+ method, results showed that climate change is the highest in general, followed by human health, natural resources and ecosystem quality. And among the four agricultural products, organic rice, tea and pear their contributions mainly come from raw material stage, while Sunshin organic scallions are from raw material and the transportation stages. Regarding carbon footprints of four crop products (CFP) and using IPCC 2007 100a method, it is showed that CFP of organic rice is 1.592 kgCO2-e, and its main contribution comes from the raw material and consumer use stage accounted for 62.73% and 19.82%, respectively. CFP of Dongshan tea is 7.035 kgCO2-e, its main contribution also comes from the raw materials and use phase accounted for 45.58% as well as 35.15%, respectively. For Sunshin organic scallions, its CFP is 0.56 kgCO2-e which is mainly from the transport phase and followed by raw material phase accounted for 78.10% and 21.52%, respectively. CFP of Sunshin pear is 1.786 kgCO2-e, it is mainly from the raw material and transportation phases, accounted for 73.98% and 22.64%, respectively. 　　In summary, based on assessing four crops this study discovered that life cycle environmental impacts of agricultural products mainly come from gasoline, diesel, fertilizers and the electricity. Therefore, it is suggested that to rationaly apply fertilizers and to promote local direct sale will reduces environment impacts and cost of agricultural products which will leads to low-carbon agricultural development.