Joint data envelopment analysis and life cycle assessment for environmental impact reduction in broiler production systems

In recent years, livestock production sector has significantly grown associated with increasing of environmental impacts. In the present research 90 broiler farms in Isfahan Providence, Iran, were considered to be evaluated in terms view of environmental impacts. The aim of the present research is reducing environmental impacts of the studied farms by data envelopment analysis. By the method, efficiency of the farms was determined and inefficient farms were improved to reach efficient level through reducing energy and resources use. Before and after comparing all farms, eleven environmental impacts of the farms were calculated using life cycle assessment method. The results showed that the used energy in farms can be reduced by 10.16%. The contribution of food production to environmental impacts was especially high in almost all environmental indicators. As a result of energy use improvement, the environmental impacts were reduced by 12–57%. The highest reduction was seen in ozone layer depletion, abiotic depletion, marine aquatic ecotoxicity and human toxicity as 57.37, 31.32, 27.59 and 26.73%, respectively. The research methodology and obtained results can be used to reduce environmental emissions through managing the resources and energy use in broiler production systems.