Development of Inventory Data of Agricultural Crops in IDEA (Inventory Database for Environmental Analysis)

Abstract

The inventory database is essential for implementing of Life Cycle Assessment（LCA）. However, the inventory data based on a process analysis isn’t fulfilling demands of LCA practitioners. Hence, we developed the inventory database（Inventory Database for Environmental Analysis: IDEA）. IDEA is covered all of products except of service activity, and IDEA collects whole of environmental load about impact categories of global warming, acidification and resource consumption. In this paper, we showed how to develop inventory data of agricultural crops in IDEA. The system boundary of inventory data included cultivation, dissemination, fertilizer application, pesticides scatter, ingathering, shipment preparations and transportation. IDEA doesn’t take account of inventory data of capital assets and fatigue uniform. And each data is presented input/output per weight of crops. The inventory data was developed by using national statistics and reports. The amounts of energy and water supply were cited from each farmer’s costs per shipping volume and the amounts of fertilizer per crop acreage were cited from each local government reports. In addition, we confirmed consistency of data. The results concluded that the application inventory data in IDEA to LCA doesn't cause major problems. As a result, we developed 83 inventory data of agricultural crops in IDEA. The data have a limitation of data quality because the data developed by using statistics and reports. Therefore, it is necessary to update data by actual survey. In addition, it is necessary to collect about the import crops in future.