| 1. |
- van Middelaar, Corina Everarda, et al.
(författare)
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Exploring variability in methods and data sensitivity in carbon footprints of feed ingredients
- 2013
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Ingår i: The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0948-3349 .- 1614-7502. ; 18:4, s. 768-782
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Purpose: Production of feed is an important contributor to life cycle greenhouse gas emissions, or carbon footprints (CFPs), of livestock products. Consequences of methodological choices and data sensitivity on CFPs of feed ingredients were explored to improve comparison and interpretation of CFP studies. Methods and data for emissions from cultivation and processing, land use (LU), and land use change (LUC) were analyzed. Method: For six ingredients (maize, wheat, palm kernel expeller, rapeseed meal, soybean meal, and beet pulp), CFPs resulting from a single change in methods and data were compared with a reference CFP, i.e., based on IPCC Tier 1 methods, and data from literature. Results and discussion: Results show that using more detailed methods to compute N2O emissions from cultivation hardly affected reference CFPs, except for methods to determine leaching (contributing to indirect N2O emissions) in which the influence is about -7 to +12 %. Overall, CFPs appeared most sensitive to changes in crop yield and applied synthetic fertilizer N. The inclusion of LULUC emissions can change CFPs considerably, i.e., up to 877 %. The level of LUC emissions per feed ingredient highly depends on the method chosen, as well as on assumptions on area of LUC, C stock levels (mainly aboveground C and soil C), and amortization period. Conclusions: We concluded that variability in methods and data can significantly affect CFPs of feed ingredients and hence CFPs of livestock products. Transparency in methods and data is therefore required. For harmonization, focus should be on methods to calculate leaching and emissions from LULUC. It is important to consider LUC in CFP studies of food, feed, and bioenergy products.
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| 2. |
- Bergez, J-E, et al.
(författare)
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Integrating agri-environmental indicators, ecosystem services assessment, life cycle assessment and yield gap analysis to assess the environmental sustainability of agriculture.
- 2022
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X. ; 141
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agriculture’s primary function is the production of food, feed, fibre and fuel for the fast-growing world population. However, it also affects human health and ecosystem integrity. Policymakers make policies in order to avoid harmful impacts. How to assess such policies is a challenge. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework to help evaluate the impacts of agricultural policies on the environment. Our framework represents the global system as four subsystems and their interactions. These four components are the cells of a 2 by 2 matrix [Agriculture, Rest of the word]; [Socio-eco system, Ecological system]. We then developed a set of indicators for environmental issues and positioned these issues in the framework. To assess these issues, we used four well-known existing approaches: Life Cycle Assessment, Ecosystem Services Analysis, Yield Gap Analysis and Agro-Environmental Indicators. Using these four approaches together provided a more holistic view of the impacts of a given policy on the system. We then applied our framework on existing cover crop policies using an extensive literature survey and analysing the different environmental issues mobilised by the four assessment approaches. This demonstration case shows that our framework may be of help for a full systemic assessment. Despite their differences (aims, scales, standardization, data requirements, etc.), it is possible and profitable to use the four approaches together. This is a significant step forward, though more work is needed to produce a genuinely operational tool.
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| 3. |
- Pernollet, Franck, et al.
(författare)
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Methods to simplify diet and food life cycle inventories: Accuracy versus data-collection resources
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Cleaner Production. - : Elsevier BV. - 0959-6526. ; 140, s. 410-420
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The number of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies on foods and diets steadily increases. However, due to lack of data on food products as well as time and resource constraints, many of these studies ignore part of the system (e.g. cooking and waste in the household), which may lead to underestimating impacts greatly. This LCA study compared diets using six methods with different system boundaries; three of these are simplified methods we developed. The aim was to identify which method best optimizes data collection for life cycle inventories from cradle to human mouth of food products and diets. The principle behind the three simplified methods was that, for many foods and impact categories, the farm (or fishery) is the life cycle stage that contributes most to impacts. One average, one healthy and one vegetarian diet, each composed of up to 105 foods, were assessed. Climate change, cumulative energy demand, eutrophication, acidification and land occupation impacts were estimated. Recommendations are given on which methods, depending on study goals, offer the best trade-off among available resources (time, money, and knowledge), while providing the required robustness of results. Compared to a full LCA, simplified LCA methods can yield more accurate results at a lower cost of data collection.
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| 4. |
- van der Werf, Hayo M. G., et al.
(författare)
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Towards better representation of organic agriculture in life cycle assessment
- 2020
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Ingår i: Nature Sustainability. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2398-9629. ; 3:6, s. 419-425
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Transitioning agriculture toward greater sustainability is vital. This Perspective argues for more-holistic consideration of organic agriculture in life cycle assessments, widely used to analyse environmental impacts. The environmental effects of agriculture and food are much discussed, with competing claims concerning the impacts of conventional and organic farming. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the method most widely used to assess environmental impacts of agricultural products. Current LCA methodology and studies tend to favour high-input intensive agricultural systems and misrepresent less intensive agroecological systems such as organic agriculture. LCA assesses agroecological systems inadequately for three reasons: (1) a lack of operational indicators for three key environmental issues; (2) a narrow perspective on functions of agricultural systems; and (3) inconsistent modelling of indirect effects.
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| 5. |
- Vitolo Coelho, Carla Regina, 1984, et al.
(författare)
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Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Diets with Improved Omega-3 Fatty Acid Profiles
- 2016
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Ingår i: PLoS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203 .- 1932-6203. ; 11:8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A high incidence of cardiovascular disease is observed worldwide, and dietary habits are one of the risk factors for these diseases. Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in the diet help to prevent cardiovascular disease. We used life cycle assessment to analyse the potential of two strategies to improve the nutritional and environmental characteristics of French diets: 1) modifying diets by changing the quantities and proportions of foods and 2) increasing the omega-3 contents in diets by replacing mainly animal foods with equivalent animal foods having higher omega-3 contents. We also investigated other possibilities for reducing environmental impacts. Our results showed that a diet compliant with nutritional recommendations for macronutrients had fewer environmental impacts than the current average French diet. Moving from an omnivorous to a vegetarian diet further reduced environmental impacts. Increasing the omega-3 contents in animal rations increased Eicosapentaenoic Acid (EPA) and Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA) in animal food products. Providing these enriched animal foods in human diets increased their EPA and DHA contents without affecting their environmental impacts. However, in diets that did not contain fish, EPA and DHA contents were well below the levels recommended by health authorities, despite the inclusion of animal products enriched in EPA and DHA. Reducing meat consumption and avoidable waste at home are two main avenues for reducing environmental impacts of diets.
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