Page 135 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

Life Cycle Assessment: Principles, Practice and Prospects
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9.8 Conclusions
The case studies and discussion indicate that agricultural LCA is particularly important
because there are significant impacts associated with land and water use, greenhouse gas and
other pollutant emissions. In particular, the conversion of land to agriculture, N O emissions
2
from soils, and methane emissions from livestock are major factors in climate change. LCA has
already made significant contributions to sustainable agriculture, for example, in identifying
‘counter-intuitive’ results indicating that ‘natural’ products often cause more environment
burdens than ‘synthetic’ versions, and that ‘food miles’ is not necessarily an appropriate envi-
ronmental proxy. It follows that a strengthened and more extensive application of LCA may
minimise the risk of going down such methodological cul-de-sacs in future.
Three trends will determine the extent of the future successful application of LCA in
informing agricultural practice to minimise environmental impacts. First, LCA data and tools
must be further developed to allow flexible, standardised, yet sufficiently accurate application
of LCA at the farm/field scale with appropriate temporal specificity. As our understanding of
key variables in agricultural systems develops, there is a role for LCA-based calculator tools to
enable quick assessment of different options in the widely varying ranges of conditions across
farming systems.
Second, agricultural stakeholders need to embrace LCA as a technique that can contribute to
farm-scale decision-making, and contribute data and resources accordingly. This, of course, is
linked to the availability of reliable and accessible LCA analyses, hence the need for calculators.
Third, given the mismatch that can occur between capacity and environmental opportunity (e.g.
in the corn chips case study), government and the policy-making community must contribute to
the resourcing of LCA uptake in agricultural applications and recognise and utilise the results of
LCA in developing policy initiatives to encourage environmentally sustainable agricultural
systems. This requires LCA to become more sophisticated in linking with academic disciplines
and other techniques that also contribute to sustainability assessment and decision support.

9.9 References
AEA (2005) ‘The validity of food miles as an indicator of sustainable development.’ Final
Report Produced for UK Government Department for Environment, Farming and Rural
Affairs (DEFRA). AEA Technology, Harwell, UK.
AGO (2003) ‘Australian methodology for the estimation of greenhouse gas emissions and sinks
2003.’ Agriculture. Australian Greenhouse Office, Department of the Environment and
Heritage, Canberra.
Anderson-Wilk M (2007) Does community-supported agriculture support conservation?
Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 62(6), 126A.
Bartle (2007) The global agricultural surplus and the case for non-food crops. Retrieved
18 March 2008 from <http://www.futurefarmcrc.com.au/documents/Globalagricsurplus.
pdf>. Future Farm Industries Cooperative Research Centre.
Beer T, Meyer M, Grant T, Russell K, Kirkby C, Chen D, Edis R, Lawson S, Weeks I, Galbally I,
Fattore A, Smith D, Li Y, Wang G, Park KD, Turner D and Thacker J (2005) ‘Life-cycle assess-
ment of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture in relation to marketing and regional
development – irrigated maize: from maize field to grocery store.’ Final Report HQ06A/6/
F3.5, CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research, Aspendale, Victoria.
Bellarby J, Foereid B, Hastings A and Smith P (2008) ‘Cool farming: climate impacts of agri-
culture and mitigation potential’. Greenpeace International, Amsterdam.
Brentrup F, Küsters J, Lammel J and Kuhlmann H (2000) Methods to estimate on-field nitro-
gen emissions from crop production as an input to LCA studies in the agricultural sector.
International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 5(6), 349–357.

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