Page 174 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

7

Modeling the Agri-Food Industry with Life

Cycle Assessment

Bruno Notarnicola, Giuseppe Tassielli and Pietro A. Renzulli

Ionian Department of Law, Economics and Environment,
University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

Abstract
The food and drink sector accounts for about twenty to thirty percent of the overall
environmental impact deriving from private consumption. The recent increase in atten-
tion by researchers to food life cycle assessment (LCA) is also due to the fact that meth-
odological issues are different from the typical ones arising from industrial product
LCAs: definition of the functional unit, difficulties in data collection in the agricultural
and zootechnical phases and relative deficiencies in databases, pesticides and their
exposure, fertilizer dispersion models, and impact categories of land use and water use
constitute some of the main topics on which further research efforts are needed.
Through case studies, this chapter highlights typical methodological issues of food
LCA and how they have been treated and managed. It emphasizes the strong need for
a harmonized framework for food LCA, and for data for the agri-food chains, in both
agricultural and industrial applications. Similarly, spatial data and models are needed
to take into account the different pedoclimatic conditions, as well as data for emissions
to the atmosphere, water, and soil from industrial food plants.
Keywords: LCA, Life Cycle Assessment, agri-food sector, Food LCA methodological
issues, carbon cycle, land use, water use, food industry, carbon labels

7.1 Introduction

In the last two decades, several studies have shown that most food chains
are not sustainable due to the environmental impacts that occurr in different
phases of their life cycle. The contribution of the environmental impact by pri-
vate consumption of products from the food and drink sector has been esti-
mated to be about twenty to thirty per cent (Tukker, et al. 2006).
In order to address these issues, European policies regarding sustainable
consumption and production promote the quantification of the environmental
performance of food and drink supply chains, including the possible extension
of the ecolabelling scheme to food and drink systems; in 2010, the European

Mary Ann Curran (ed.) Life Cycle Assessment Handbook: A Guide for Environmentally
Sustainable Products, (159-184) © 2012 Scrivener Publishing LLC

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