Life Cycle Cost And Analysis Of Implementing Drain Tile System In Row Crop Operations

Tile drain systems have been used for many years in agriculture; however, their popularity has increased over recent years. At the same time, questions around the costs and environmental impacts of these systems have increased.

These concerns have left many operations and individuals questioning if the systems benefits outweigh it’s costs. This paper presents a Life Cycle Costs (LCC) and Life Cycle Anaylsis (LCA) for implementing a new tile drain system into a traditional row crop operation. The results found that the use of four-inch single wall correcated pipe was the best piping for both economic and envirormental impacts.

The model presented here, is the first model present an LCC and LCA for a tile drain system, and will provide the needed baseline to compare differnet system designs and materials for implementing a tile drain system.

Keywords: Row Crop, Drainage, Life Cycle Costs, Life Cycle Analysis, Farm Managment, System Implementation