Environmental benefits and changes in ecosystem services of climate-smart agriculture relative to conventional agriculture in Norway

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices aim to reduce land degradation and enhance climate resilience through sustainable land use. The environmental benefits of CSA often go undetected and appear negative in life cycle assessment (LCA), which typically focuses on product-based outputs, overlooking ecosystem services and resilience. Integrating ecosystem services within LCA of agricultural systems can help provide evidence of the environmental benefits of CSA and favor its consideration by farmers and decision makers. Here, we explore how CSA can be better represented in LCA by investigating barley production on cropland at risk of soil erosion in Norway under three management scenarios: conventional agriculture, integration of winter cover crops, and establishment of trees as buffer zones. The assessed environmental impacts combine ecosystem services (reduction of soil erosion, habitat quality, carbon sequestration) with traditional life-cycle impact categories (eutrophication, climate change, etc.). Relative to the conventional system, buffer zones improve all environmental indicators, while cover crops show an improvement in all indicators but terrestrial acidification and freshwater ecotoxicity. Buffer zones and cover crops increase habitat quality, terrestrial carbon storage, and reduce nutrient and soil-particle runoff, thereby supporting long-term yields, despite a small short-term reduction in barley yields. Overall, concerns about additional costs and management practices, limited know-how by farmers, and poor policy schemes limit the widespread CSA adoption. Engagement of farmers, local authorities and stakeholders is instrumental to overcome these barriers. Incorporating ecosystem services into LCA provides scientific evidence to support the shift toward sustainable agriculture while capturing environmental benefits of CSA.