Mediterranean Cropping Systems: The Importance of Their Economic and Environmental Sustainability

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the lives of people, as well as the production and economic systems throughout the world. The flow of raw materials and products, the supply of labor and manpower, and the purchasing power have all been changed to the detriment of individual health and well-being. Such a situation requires placing even more emphasis on the search for virtuous agricultural systems compatible with the goals of economic and environmental development so clearly defined at the world level in the last decades. The present study aimed to assess the environmental and economic performance of some typical Mediterranean crops grown under different agronomical management regimes, such as strawberry, hazelnut, apricot tree, kiwifruit, peach, olive tree, and grapevine, to emphasize the importance of the mentioned issues even in the current pandemic situation. Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to investigate the environmental profile of the studied crops, while lifecycle costing (LCC) was performed to assess and compare the economic aspects. From the environmental perspective, the hobby-organic olive systems were the most eco-friendly cropping systems, emitting 0.031 to 0.105 kg CO2eq per kg olives, while the organic hazelnut system had the greatest impact (1.001 kg of CO2eq per kg). Apricot, kiwifruit, and peach systems used N and P inputs most effectively, while strawberry systems efficiently used fossil fuels. Olive HO-2, kiwifruit, and peach cropping systems had the lowest budgets, with the costs amounted to 0.12 € kg-1 per fruit for Olive HO-2 and 0.28 € kg-1 per fruit for both kiwifruit and peach. On the contrary, organic strawberry cultivation was the most expensive (4.77 € kg-1). The variability in results due to the large differences between contexts, such as landscape, technical knowledge, and crop management, characterized the studied agricultural systems. To easily identify sustainability classes and to diminish the impact of farming practices, a considerable effort should be expended to combine LCA with LCC, C sequestration estimates, and some other useful indicators for the environmental quality evaluation