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

KEYNOTE SESSION 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
We could not feature talking about sustainable food systems without discussing the role of consumers.
Indeed, the progress realised by sectors could not deliver if consumers did not adapt their behaviour. The
Collective Scientific Expertise by INRA (Etiévant et al., 2010) on the determining factors on dietary behaviour
of French people underlined the difficulty of changing individual practices. Here again, a combination
of several tools appears to be necessary.
In this field, the agri-food sector can be considered as a pioneer with regard to the nutritional aspects: generic
consumer information such as "5 fruits or vegetables a day", community schemes to distribute milk and
fruit in schools, nutritional rules in French school canteens and the labelling of nutritional characteristics on
products are all tools created to educate consumers throughout their daily life with a view to eating a varied
and balanced diet. Confronted with the new questions of sustainability, the agri-food sector is now widening
its consumer-focused action to meet other challenges. The profession is highly involved in the development
of environmental labelling, particularly in France and Europe.
A large amount of research remains to be conducted in the food sector, as highlighted by the Agrimonde
(Paillard, Treyer and Dorin, 2010) and duALIne (Esnouf et al., 2011) foresight studies by INRA and CIRAD.
These two studies converge in underlining the importance of diet in sustainable food. In particular, with regard
to the environmental impacts of eating habits, the essential role of both quantities consumed and the
consumption of animal products in the diet has been stressed.
DuALIne also shows that an integrated approach to sustainability in food research must urgently be developed.
Therefore the ANR (National Research Agency in France) launched the ALID (sustainable food
systems) research program. After two years of calls for proposals, we can draw the conclusion that inducing
communities of researchers to update their working methods and jointly address the three challenges of sustainable,
economic, environmental and social development (including the significance of health in relation to
food) is not easy. In 2012, more projects were corresponding to the spirit of the calls and this progress is to
be praised. Two projects in particular are planning to work on the assessment of agri-food products according
to the three dimensions of sustainable development and in particular to reduce their impacts. Nonetheless,
this type of project remains all too rare. This demonstrates the scale of the challenge to be met by research
teams in terms of sustainable development.
2.4 Action on agri-food processes
Food sustainability is also to be achieved through significant improvements in processes and channels.
We would just mention here two directions for deliberation and research.
The first one is inspired by the physiology of living organisms: observing that to feed their chicks, adult Emperor
penguins could regurgitate fish that had remained fresh in their stomach after several days, Hubert
Curien Institute in Strasbourg (France) understood the process and isolated a molecule which stops the deterioration
of tissues. This discovery was at the root of patented applications that replace the use of refrigerators.
The second one arises from observing the increasing vulnerability of crops to various hazards, and the
significant robustness of combined or mixed crops, to question the capacity of agro-industries to increase the
security of their supply by improving their plasticity. Distributors and consumers will also be concerned!
Following conclusions can be drawn from these considerations on the sustainability challenges for the
agri-food sector:
the necessity for the State and private stakeholders to combine a wide range of instruments for
intervention, as the challenges of sustainable food are themselves multiple and there cannot be a
single solution;
the importance of actions targeting consumers, with a result which remains unforeseeable; here
again, a combination of tools is essential to be effective;
strengthening actions targeting consumers for themes other than nutrition is one key of the
sustainability of the agri-food sector; the need for more objective environmental information in
particular has been identified, giving guarantees to the consumer;
finally, the need for research to progress in the assessment of environmental and social impacts of
both consumption and production, impacts that remain complex if we want to take account of all the
challenges; the question of diets and their sustainability is at the heart of the research questions:
many foresight models show that a change in diet of rich populations through the world towards
fewer animal proteins is essential to preparing a planet viable for 9 to 10 billion.
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