LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

PARALLEL SESSION 2A: LAND USE 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
2.3 Conversion from kcal into area
To determine the land required for food, the food units (kg or litres) have to be converted into area of
land. In principle this is done using the yields. Higher yields imply lower land requirements. Some of the
food products like sugar and vegetable oils etc. are processed agricultural crops for these products a conversion
factor is introduced identifying how much sugar beet is required for the production of 1 kg of sugar. The
appendix shows the conversion factors used.
In this analysis we assumed that conversion factors remained constant over the timespan studied. This is
not the case in the actual situation. However, in this study we are interested in the interplay between changes
in consumption and changes in agricultural production. When we would also introduce changes in conversion
techniques the overall picture becomes very complicated and too difficult to analyse. With respect to
animal products we applied the same methodology. We assumed that an animal product is the result from a
conversion of an agricultural product (wheat into eggs, grass into milk).
3 Results
Fig. 3 shows the land requirements for food per person in the Netherlands over the last 200 years as calculated
with the methodology described above. In 1800 about 1.4 hectare per person was needed for the production
of food, two thirds of this was for the production of dairy. In the following two centuries, the area
needed declined fast to 0.15 ha per person in 2000 (Figure 3). From 1800 to 1900 the decline was caused by
the reduced consumption of animal products, from 1900 onwards the consumption of animal origin products
increased again but due to use of mineral fertilisers the production per hectare increased, leading to overall
decline of the land required for food per person.
Land requirements (ha/cap)
1.6
1.4
1.2
1.0
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
Development of per capita land requirements in the Netherlands
1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Time (years)
Meat Other animal products Cereals
Sugar Vegetal oils and oilcrops Fruits and vegetables
Potatoes Beverages
Figure 3 Development of the per capita land requirements in the Netherlands and the distribution over various
consumption categories.
4 Discussion
The analysis in this paper uses statistical data over 200 years. The quality of the data used cannot be expected
to be constant. Crop yield data from 200 years ago are collected in a different way than present data,
the same holds for the data on food availability. In this analysis we assume that all the food was produced in
the Netherlands, in the actual situation a part of the food is imported from somewhere else where other yields
are obtained. And finally we assume that the conversion factors remain constant over time, which is actually
not the case since technological improvements make that presently more oil/sugar etc can be obtained from a
crop than 200 years ago.
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