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

PARALLEL SESSION 3A: LAND USE CHANGE 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
Considering land use change and soil carbon dynamics in an LCA of
French agricultural products
Thibault Salou 1,2,* , Etienne Mathias 3 , Aurélie Tailleur 4 , Anne Paillier 5 , Hayo M.G. van der Werf 1,2
1 INRA, UMR1069 Sol, Agro and hydroSystem, 35000 Rennes, France
2 Agrocampus Ouest, 35000 Rennes, France
3 CITEPA, 7 Cité Paradis – 75010 Paris, France
4 ARVALIS – Institut du Végétal, 75016 Paris, France
5 ADEME, 20 Avenue du Grésillé - 49 000 Angers, France
* Corresponding author. E-mail: thibault.salou@rennes.inra.fr
ABSTRACT
Agri-BALYSE is a programme to provide LCIs of agricultural products at the farm gate, to bring reliable
and complete environmental information on “product plus packaging” to consumers. The choice of appropriate
methods for the estimation of resource use and emissions of pollutants is a major challenge for Agri-
BALYSE.
Two methods to estimate soil C dynamics from direct Land Use Change (LUC) in mainland France were
developed. These methods are based on IPCC (2003) recommendations. Data from the French Soil Survey
Network (Martin et al., 2011) and the French United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
National Inventory Report (UNFCCC NIR) (CITEPA, 2012) allowed us to determine: i) soil C stocks, ii)
areas involved in LUC for both grasslands and annual crops, for each year of our reference period (2005-
2009). Emission factors were determined for permanent grassland and annual crops in the simplified method;
for permanent grassland and for each annual crop individually, taking in consideration spatial repartition, in
the more accurate method.
Keywords: soil carbon sequestration, land-use change, direct field emission, grassland
1. Introduction
In 2009 two French laws, Grenelle 1 and 2, on the provision of reliable and complete environmental information
on “product plus packaging” to consumers were passed. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
method was chosen to assess environmental impacts of products. ADEME, the French Environment and
Energy Management Agency, was mandated to set up a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) database to support this
policy. In early 2010 ADEME commissioned the Agri-BALYSE programme involving: i) ART (Switzerland)
and INRA as project co-leaders; ii) CIRAD, ACTA and 10 technical agricultural institutes for data
collection, elaboration of methods and implementation in practice. The aims of Agri-BALYSE are: i) to provide
LCIs of agricultural products at the farm gate; ii) to establish a common methodological framework to
create LCIs of agricultural goods.
The choice of appropriate methods for the estimation of resource use and emissions of pollutants associated
with agricultural products is a major challenge for Agri-BALYSE. In this respect the impact of land-use
change (LUC) on GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emissions is an important issue. Several studies propose methodologies
to consider this issue: IPCC (2003) applied to France in the French United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change National Inventory Report (UNFCCC NIR) (CITEPA, 2012), Milà i Canals et
al., (2012).
The aim of Agri-BALYSE is to provide LCIs of French agricultural products at the farm gate. To ensure
consistency between the various products of the data base, a general methodological framework for the programme
was defined. It was decided that the methodologies used and the deliverables must be consistent
with ILCD recommendations (JRC and EIS, 2010). This guide recommends “for CO2 release caused by land
use and land transformation, the use of the most recent IPCC CO2 emission factor [...], unless more accurate,
specific data is available”. Within the Agri-BALYSE programme we decided to focus on LUC between permanent
grasslands and annual crops in mainland France. We considered that in this context we could ignore
changes in above- and below-ground biomass and consider that Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) was the main
source of GHG emissions. According to IPCC 2003 two reasons can lead to a C soil stock change: i) modification
of management practices (ex: fertilisation, vegetation cover); ii) LUC (ex: conversion from permanent
grassland to annual crop).
In LCA studies carried out in France soil C dynamics are rarely considered, except when permanent
grassland is concerned (Doreau and Dollé, 2011, Doreau et al., 2011, Nguyen et al., 2012). These studies
involving permanent grassland use a method proposed by Doreau and Dollé (2011). Based on experimental
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