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Life Cycle Assessment and Multi-criteria Analysis in Agriculture: Synergies and Insights

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Multicriteria Analysis in Agriculture

Part of the book series: Multiple Criteria Decision Making ((MCDM))

Abstract

The simultaneous and increasing needs for safe and quality food products, along with the environmental and socio-economic sustainability, develop a multi-level problem with controversies and arbitrary assumptions for farmers and policy makers. In order to assess the aspect of sustainability in agricultural production, different impact assessment tools could be implemented. Although LCA gives the potential to develop alternative scenarios in order to achieve the optimal environmental performance, in the context of sustainability, at the same time subjective measures are developed which are difficult to quantify. Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) is the key to solve the current weakness, since it takes into account multiple criteria in a wide assortment of aspects and thus it could integrate sustainability elements. The purpose of this study is to outline the integration of LCA and MCA methodologies and develop a complete literature review regarding the sustainability of the agricultural sector through the above mentioned methodological merge. In this review we analyze scientific papers integrating LCA and different multi-criteria methodologies in agriculture. Through this analysis, we determine the connection between the methodologies through a variety of aspects regarding (a) the number and nature of multi-criteria methods integrated with LCA, (b) the way of integration between the methods in a technical perspective and (c) the benefits developed through the integration as well as the final conclusions which could only be elicited through this complex process. Studies which implemented LCA and MCA simultaneously illustrated positive economic and environmental results, since LCA focused on environmental sustainability and the multi-criteria modeling dealt with the subjective measures of LCA.

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Acknowledgements

The article is written as part of a PhD study at the Department of Agricultural Economics, School of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh), Greece. The study is funded by General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) and the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI).

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  1. Department of Agricultural Economics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Emmanouil Tziolas, Thomas Bournaris, Basil Manos & Stefanos Nastis

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  1. Emmanouil Tziolas
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  2. Thomas Bournaris
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Correspondence to Emmanouil Tziolas .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Cordoba, Cordoba, Spain

    Julio Berbel

  2. Department of Agricultural Economics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Thomas Bournaris

  3. Department of Agricultural Economics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Basil Manos

  4. Decision Support Systems Laboratory, Technical University of Crete, Chania, Greece

    Nikolaos Matsatsinis

  5. Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Davide Viaggi

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Tziolas, E., Bournaris, T., Manos, B., Nastis, S. (2018). Life Cycle Assessment and Multi-criteria Analysis in Agriculture: Synergies and Insights. In: Berbel, J., Bournaris, T., Manos, B., Matsatsinis, N., Viaggi, D. (eds) Multicriteria Analysis in Agriculture. Multiple Criteria Decision Making. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76929-5_12

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