This paper describes the economic, environmental, and energy issues of the farm to biorefinery continuum related to production of ethanol from soluble sugars recovered from sweet sorghum using the BE3 (bioenergy economics, energy, and environmental) model methodology. A comparative analysis of...

In this paper, we evaluate the potential of life cycle assessment (LCA) to support environmental decision making at commercial dairy farms. To achieve this, we follow a four-step method that allows converting environmental assessment results using LCA into case-specific advice for farmers. This...

The effects of changes in culling parity of cows and diet composition on economic and environmental outputs in Japanese beef cow–calf production systems were deterministically analyzed using a herd model simulation. The model simulated the annualized net revenue as an economic indicator and...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a holistic systems approach that aims to assess the environmental impacts (potential pollutants and resource use) of the production of goods and services. The aim of this study was to develop an LCA model to compare contrasting milk production systems, a seasonal...

The dairy sector contributes to climate change through emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs), via mainly carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O). Replacing grass silage with maize silage is a feeding strategy to reduce enteric CH4 emission. The effect of this strategy on GHG...

Integrated environmental and economic assessment studies are required to support tillage reduction decisions. In this paper, carbon sequestration and nitrous oxide emissions from winter wheat-based cropping systems were evaluated in eastern Washington, USA, using computer simulation. System...

Previous research has shown that feeding high fat corn distiller’ grains plus solubles (CDDGS; ∼10% fat, dry matter [DM]) reduces enteric methane (CH4) emission from beef cattle. However, feeding CDDGS (∼30% crude protein [CP] DM) or wheat distillers’ grains plus solubles (WDDGS; ∼40%...

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a common tool for analyzing the environmental footprint of a production chain, such as that of cereal production. In an earlier study, we found that net mineralization of soil organic carbon (SOC) may contribute significantly to the CO2-emissions from a cereal...

A life cycle assessment (LCA) model was developed to analyze the environmental impacts per head of swine for typical feed rations of Northern Great Plains (NGP) US grow-finish swine production. The all-inclusive ‘field to gate’ approach incorporated steps ranging from corn and soybean...

The introduction of a pulse crop into a cereal production rotation has been widely recognized for the rotational benefits resulting from nitrogen fixation and crop diversification. Pulses are the dry, edible seeds of pod-bearing plants in the legume family, such as dry pea and lentil. Both dry...