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Integrated crop–livestock–bioenergy system brings co-benefits and trade-offs in mitigating the environmental impacts of Chinese agriculture

Nature Food volume 3, pages 1052–1064 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Agricultural bioenergy utilization relies on crop and livestock production, favouring an integrated crop–livestock–bioenergy production model. Yet the integrated system’s exact contribution to mitigating various environmental burdens from the crop production system and livestock production system remains unclear. Here we inventory the environmental impacts of each process in three subsystems at both national and regional scales in China, ultimately identifying key processes and impact categories. The co-benefits and trade-offs in nine impact categories are investigated by comparing the life cycle impacts in the background scenario (crop production system + livestock production system) and foreground scenario (integrated system). Freshwater eutrophication is the most serious impact category in both scenarios. Except terrestrial acidification, the mitigation effects on the other eight impact categories vary from 1.8% to 94.8%, attributed to fossil energy and chemical fertilizer offsets. Environmental trade-offs should be deliberated when expanding bioenergy utilization in the identified critical regions.

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Fig. 1: Schematic representation of methodological principles.
Fig. 2: Environmental impacts of the CPS and LPS, and the constituent processes at the national scale.
Fig. 3: Key environmental impact intensities of the CPS and LPS at the regional scale.
Fig. 4: Straw flow and manure flow at the national scale.
Fig. 5: Amount of straw and manure utilized for bioenergy production.
Fig. 6: Environmental impacts in the background scenario and foreground scenario, and the mitigation or intensification effects of integrating three systems at the national scale.
Fig. 7: Mitigation or intensification effects on nine categories of environmental impacts at the regional scale.

Data availability

All the data used in this study are publicly available; see Supplementary Data and Supplementary Information for descriptions of the source data. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The custom code and algorithm used for this study are available in Methods and Supplementary Information.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 41801199) (J.S.) and grants from the Research Centre for Resources Engineering towards Carbon Neutrality (no. P0043023) and the Research Institute for Advanced Manufacturing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (no. P0041367) (J.R.).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Groundwater Resources and Environment, Ministry of Education, Jilin University, Changchun, China

    Jiahao Xing, Junnian Song, Chaoshuo Liu, Wei Yang & Haiyan Duan

  2. College of New Energy and Environment, Jilin University, Changchun, China

    Jiahao Xing, Junnian Song, Chaoshuo Liu, Wei Yang & Haiyan Duan

  3. Jilin Provincial Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Environment, Jilin University, Changchun, China

    Junnian Song, Wei Yang & Haiyan Duan

  4. Graduate School of Science and Technology, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

    Helmut Yabar

  5. Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China

    Jingzheng Ren

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  1. Jiahao Xing
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  2. Junnian Song
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  3. Chaoshuo Liu
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Contributions

J.S. and W.Y. conceptualized and designed the study. J.X. and C.L. collected the original data, developed the life cycle datasets and compiled the figures. J.X., J.S., W.Y., H.D., H.Y. and J.R. interpreted the data and analysed the results. J.X. drafted the manuscript, and J.S., W.Y. and J.R. reviewed the manuscript and contributed to the revisions.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Junnian Song, Wei Yang or Jingzheng Ren.

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Nature Food thanks Gerd Angelkorte and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary methods, data descriptions, Figs. 1–7, Tables 1–32 and references.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Data 1

Supplementary data on life cycle inventory of GHGs and pollutants of crop production and livestock production at provincial scale in China (2019).

Source data

Source Data Fig. 2

Source data from results to generate the bar charts in Fig. 2.

Source Data Fig. 3

Source data from results to generate the dot plots in Fig. 3.

Source Data Fig. 4

Source data from results to generate the Sankey diagrams in Fig. 4.

Source Data Fig. 5

Source data from results to generate the maps in Fig. 5.

Source Data Fig. 6

Source data from results to generate the bar charts in Fig. 6.

Source Data Fig. 7

Source data from results to generate the heat map in Fig. 7.

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Xing, J., Song, J., Liu, C. et al. Integrated crop–livestock–bioenergy system brings co-benefits and trade-offs in mitigating the environmental impacts of Chinese agriculture. Nat Food 3, 1052–1064 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00649-x

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