Soil chemical quality indicators for agricultural life cycle assessment: a case of study in Brazil

Abstract Modern agriculture has had to face complex environmental issues, many of which result from land use, which includes the degradation of its fertility properties. Soil quality is fundamental to the sustainability of the planet, as it also affects other natural resources. Therefore, it must be seen as a fundamental action for the sustainability of the planet and be evaluated using methodologies capable of holistically relating the environmental impacts of production systems, as does the Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. However, due to the lack of suitable models, LCA is still ineffective in assessing soil quality. Therefore, our objective was to evaluate the use of chemical soil quality indicators in the context of LCA, contributing new information to the debate. To this end, a set of soil quality indicators from the APOIA-NovoRural method were applied in some agricultural production systems in southern Brazil. Thus, the LCA results confirmed soil quality maintenance activities as those that most contribute to impacts, particularly in the categories of climate change, (eco)toxicities and land use. However, the indicators efficiently contributed direct information about the agricultural environment, relating them to the impacts estimated by the LCA. Therefore, the use of indicators makes it possible to improve soil management by adjusting chemical parameters, accurately contextualizing activities, and use of inputs to the real conditions of the area assessed. Thus, we demonstrate that indicators can be useful in providing information for agricultural environmental management in interrelation with LCA, whose application alone is not yet capable of achieving such results.