Coupling life cycle audition and operation research methods to achieve sustainable rapeseed production system

Agriculture sector is a significant consumer of energy and major emitter of greenhouse gases. The present study focuses on the application of hybrid operation research techniques for technical efficiency, benchmarking, and ranking while taking into account the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of farms which mainly caused by soil nutrition and fertilizations. Moreover, different soil nutrition management scenarios including urea chemical application, farmyard manure application and different straw management based on sustainability indices are assessed and discussed for rapeseed production systems. The results indicate that total input energy was 27,357.3 MJ ha⁻¹. Maximum energy consumption related to indirect and biological energy was 91.3% and 96.5%, respectively. Non-parametric optimization of Data Envelopment Analysis revealed that average scores of TE for rapeseed farms was 0.84 which efficient ones can serve as a benchmark for the inefficient. scenario ranking using Grey Relational Analysis and its sensitivity analysis demonstrated traditional farming is still more sustainable. Therefore, in order to achieve environmentally friendly farming to sustainable points, it is necessary to be more careful in their implementation and reduce application of energy consumer inputs such as urea at the same time. The present study helps decision-makers to grasp a better understanding of the linkage between various scenarios and subsequent impact on sustainability indices, which is a prerequisite to any policy making and development efforts for planning soil nutrition and straw management strategies for future at national and international levels.