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

PLENARY SESSION 2: METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES FOR ANIMAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
210
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
Wednesday, 3 October
Plenary session 2: Methodological Challenges for Animal Production Systems
Using systems-based LCA to investigate the environmental and
economic impacts and benefits of the livestock sector in the UK
Julia Chatterton * , Eric Audsley, Anil Graves, Joe Morris, Adrian Williams
Centre for Environmental Risks and Futures, School of Applied Sciences, Cranfield University, Bedford, MK43 0AL, UK.
Corresponding author. E-mail: j.chatterton@cranfield.ac.uk
ABSTRACT
The livestock industry is a significant component of the agricultural and rural sectors in the UK. Grassland for livestock accounts for
almost half of the terrestrial surface of the UK and almost two-thirds of its managed agricultural land. It therefore accounts for a
major proportion of rural employment and income and provides many landscape and biodiversity benefits. Taking an ecosystemsservices-framework
approach, an integrated livestock-ecosystems linear programming model was developed to assess economic and
environmental impacts of the livestock sector. This combined life cycle assessment systems analysis with economic and valuation
data and enabled plausible future scenarios to be assessed in terms of provisioning, regulating and cultural services. Analysis showed
the main benefit coming from provisioning services and also the significant role the sector plays in providing cultural services and
the trade-offs between these and the cost of regulating services with respect to emissions to air and water.
Keywords: livestock, ecosystem services, economics, landscape value, trade-offs
1. Introduction
The livestock industry is a significant component of the agricultural and rural sectors in the UK. Grassland
for livestock accounts for almost half of the terrestrial surface of the UK and almost two thirds of its
managed agricultural land. It therefore accounts for a major proportion of rural employment and income, and
provides many landscape and biodiversity benefits. In 2009, the value of livestock production in the UK was
estimated to be £10,833 million (Defra, 2009), equivalent to 56% of total agricultural value. However, the
livestock sector is also associated with large proportions of the environmental burdens from agriculture, for
example, about 8% of UK greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 68% of the UK agricultural ammonia emissions.
Although livestock is a key component of the rural landscape and economy in the UK, particularly in
northern and western regions that have comparative advantage in grassland farming, there is considerable
debate about the combined economic, social and environmental impact of livestock production in the UK.
The debate is further complicated by changes in market demand, whether associated with reduction in the
demand for red meat, as part of healthier diets, or a strengthening of global demand for dairy and meat products
as incomes rise in developing economies.
Many highly valued and historic features of the rural landscape in the UK are a result of livestock farming,
notably the patchwork of fields bounded by hedgerows and stone walls that are part of distinctive landscape
characteristics. Simultaneously, many grassland systems, especially those following traditional methods,
are associated with high levels of biodiversity, which become more valuable with reductions in biodiversity
in more intensively farmed areas. Furthermore, livestock and grassland areas in both lowlands and
uplands are closely integrated with rural tourism and recreation, where enjoyment of the countryside provides
a range of social and economic benefits, relieving pressures associated with increasingly urban lifestyles.
In this context, the aim of the project was to determine the economic, social and environmental performance
of livestock production in the UK and also to explore the implications of alternative future scenarios
associated with possible changes in the demand for livestock products or the consequences for the livestock
sector of giving different priorities to economic, social or environmental objectives. It also sought to identify
likely challenges to achieving a profitable and environmentally sustainable livestock industry and the new
knowledge and skills that might be required.
In the last decade, the ecosystems framework has emerged as a means of explicitly linking natural capital
with social welfare. In this, natural capital supports a number of interrelated ecosystem services (provisioning,
regulating, cultural and supporting services) which produce a variety of goods or benefits that have
value for humans (MEA, 2005, Defra, 2007 and UNEP-UKNEA, 2010). The positive impacts of the livestock
sector are mainly linked to the “provisioning” of food (and the broader benefits associated with employment
and linkages to related industries) and “cultural” benefits in terms of the aesthetic pleasure obtained
from grazed landscapes, features such as hedgerows and stone walls, and biodiversity. Negative impacts
are largely associated with the loss of “regulating” services, including emissions of greenhouse gases to
the atmosphere and emissions of contaminants to water, including sediment and transport of bound pollutants