TY - JOUR
T1 - Life cycle assessment application in the fruit sector
T2 - state of the art and recommendations for environmental declarations of fruit products
AU - Cerutti, Alessandro K.
AU - Beccaro, Gabriele L.
AU - Bruun, Sander
AU - Bosco, Simona
AU - Donno, Dario
AU - Notarnicola, Bruno
AU - Bounous, Giancarlo
N1 - Towards eco-efficient agriculture and food systems: Selected papers from the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Food Conference, 2012, in Saint Malo, France
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - Modern food production is very diverse with high levels of specialisation and complexity. These features inevitably reflect on methods in the application of LCA to food products and agro-systems. System boundaries, functional units, allocation procedures and several other aspects contribute to there being substantial differentiation in the structure of LCA applications in fruit production systems, leading to significantly different results. Indeed, although scientific literature on the topic is recent and not particularly extensive, there are already many different ways of conducting LCAs in orchards. The aim of this paper is to propose a framework for selecting the best parameters for an LCA application in fruit production systems according to the objective of the study. This has been achieved by reviewing the scientific and technical literature on the topic. In particular papers from international journals and conference proceedings have been considered and the review has covered all main aspects for conducting an LCA in fruit production systems. The particular characteristics considered were objectives, system boundaries, the product considered, the functional unit, data origin and the environmental impact assessment method used. A substantial part of the paper is devoted to the modelling of the orchard, as this is key to a reliable application of any impact assessment approach. Rather than merely describing the theoretical model, this paper presents concrete recommendations about how to build the orchard system for LCA application avoiding over or under-estimations of the different orchard stages.
AB - Modern food production is very diverse with high levels of specialisation and complexity. These features inevitably reflect on methods in the application of LCA to food products and agro-systems. System boundaries, functional units, allocation procedures and several other aspects contribute to there being substantial differentiation in the structure of LCA applications in fruit production systems, leading to significantly different results. Indeed, although scientific literature on the topic is recent and not particularly extensive, there are already many different ways of conducting LCAs in orchards. The aim of this paper is to propose a framework for selecting the best parameters for an LCA application in fruit production systems according to the objective of the study. This has been achieved by reviewing the scientific and technical literature on the topic. In particular papers from international journals and conference proceedings have been considered and the review has covered all main aspects for conducting an LCA in fruit production systems. The particular characteristics considered were objectives, system boundaries, the product considered, the functional unit, data origin and the environmental impact assessment method used. A substantial part of the paper is devoted to the modelling of the orchard, as this is key to a reliable application of any impact assessment approach. Rather than merely describing the theoretical model, this paper presents concrete recommendations about how to build the orchard system for LCA application avoiding over or under-estimations of the different orchard stages.
KW - Fruit products
KW - Functional unit
KW - Orchard
KW - Sustainable production
KW - System boundaries
KW - System modelling for impact assessment
U2 - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.09.017
DO - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.09.017
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:84901303401
SN - 0959-6526
VL - 73
SP - 125
EP - 135
JO - Journal of Cleaner Production
JF - Journal of Cleaner Production
ER -
