Their contribution to the overall environmental burden and their
individual share of the total outputs is thus crop-specifically calculated
in accordance with their actual occurrence in the crop rotation.
A comparison between current LCA practice and the proposed
method was performed using a simple crop rotation. Winter wheat
was assumed to be the crop studied. For the sake of clarity, only two inputs
(diesel as fuel and N fertilizer) were selected for this comparison.
Using current LCA practice, 11.22 l of diesel and 30.87 kg of N fertilizer
are needed to produce 1 t wheat grain (Fig. 4). Applying the new
method, 11.31 l of diesel and 25.57 kg of N fertilizer are needed to
produce the same amount of wheat grain (Fig. 5). We would like to
emphasize that results using the new approach depend on the types
of crops in the crop rotation. Different crops in the rotation will lead to
different results.