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

PARALLEL SESSION 3C: SHEEP AND DAIRY PRODUCTION SYSTEMS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
Environmental life cycle assessment of milk in Canada
Mia Lafontaine 1,* , Rosie Saad 1 , Diane Gilbert 2 , Manuele Margni 3
1 Quantis Canada, 395 Laurier Ouest, Montreal, QC, H2V 2K3, Canada
2 Groupe AGECO Inc. 2014 Rue Cyrille-Duquet Bureau 307. Quebec, QC G1N 4N6, Canada
3 CIRAIG, Department of Chemical Engineering, P.O. Box 6079, École Polytechnique de Montréal, QC, H3C 3A7, Canada
Corresponding author. E-mail: mia.lafontaine@quantis-intl.com
ABSTRACT
As part of its initiatives to improve the environmental performance of dairy production in Canada, the Dairy Farmers of Canada
commissioned in 2010 a full environmental and socio-economic life cycle assessment (LCA) for the production of milk across Canada.
This paper summarises the environmental LCA methodology, results and conclusions. In line with existing publications, the
environmental LCA found that the main sources of greenhouse gases were emitted at the farm, with enteric fermentation, manure
management and feed production. Potential impacts on ecosystem quality were mostly caused by feed production, linked to eutrophication,
land use, and potential ecotoxicity. Potential burdens on human health were dominated by ammonia emissions. The water
footprint was strongly linked to geography and the use of irrigation. To understand the impact of the choices in practices, the analysis
compared regionalised provincial average results. Scenarios based on practices were modelled to understand the scale of impact
reduction possible.
Keywords: environmental impact, dairy, water footprint, regionalisation
1. Introduction
A Canadian milk life cycle assessment (LCA) study took place over two years, with the support of the
Canadian Dairy Farmers, funding from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and collaboration of many stakeholders,
including provincial associations, researchers and stakeholders in the dairy sector. It was innovative
in different ways, mainly by its scale and regionalisation of impact, and also by integrating the first Social
LCA (SLCA) in the dairy sector. With a large inventory of farm datasets, environmental impacts were calculated
based on provincial average inventories, allowing for interpretation of variable farming practices and
their impact on overall performance, such as understanding how impacts were related to geo-physical conditions.
Geographical coordinates and production volumes of 13,331 farms in Canada allowed for impact regionalisation
considering location (ecoregions, watershed, etc.) to facilitate accurate estimation of potential
impacts (potential acidification, eutrophication, ecotoxicity, human toxicity, land use and water use) in the
different Canadian provinces. Results were calculated per province and weighted into a single environmental
performance, while allowing for analysis of different practices.
2. Methods
The current study followed ISO 14040/14044 standards, as well as the International Dairy Federation
(IDF)’s guidelines on LCA (IDF, 2010). As per the guidelines, the functional unit chosen was 1 kg of fat and
protein corrected milk (FPCM). The boundaries of the study stopped at processing-plant front gate (farm
gate + transportation). As per the guidelines, carbon sequestration in soils was excluded, and allocation between
milk and meat was calculated according to a physicochemical equation, resulting in an average allocation
to milk of 82%.
2.1. Life Cycle Inventory
A majority of activity data was sourced from on-farm surveys (Table 1).
Table 1. Data and their main sources
Data Source
Diet percentages, manure storage practices Cost of Production Surveys (Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova
Scotia, Prince Edward Island)
Manure spreading information, energy Sheppard et al., (2011) survey on 500 farms
Equipment and energy used in feed production Mail-in surveys (Alberta, Ontario)
Fertiliser types and concentrations Sheppard et al., (2009) NH3 emissions from fertilisers
Housing, energy & equipment in feed production Ecoinvent models
Manure spreading tendencies Provincial federations (most)
Crop yields, herd size, farm area Statistics Canada
In total, cost of production surveys as well as mail-in surveys collected information from more than 300
farms in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, and the Atlantic Provinces. A previous survey (Sheppard et al., 2011)
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