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

PARALLEL SESSION 4B: DIET 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
scheme of production. This results from the kinds of meat and dairies purchased, since less impacting meats
(chicken, eggs) are most commonly consumed when considering organic products while pork and beef consumptions,
two strong emitting products, are significant among conventional (and undetermined) purchased
meat products.
Finally, provided consumption levels and environmental impacts of these categories, Meat, fish and eggs
and Dairy products appear as the main leverages to mitigate the emissions of the consumption basket.
4. Discussion
The comparison of our results to those from previous studies shows that orders of magnitude are on the
whole similar, the two Spanish studies (Munoz et al., 2010; Santacana et al., 2008) outcomes being superior.
Our results are thus in line with the literature, providing the uncertainty in these kinds of studies, and the
various followed methodologies.
Moreover, our conclusions about the high contributors to the global emissions are concordant. For example,
the share of “raw material production” is dominating the general result. This phase is actually for all
groups the most contributing to the general food basket impact. It represents about 75% of the total impact
for each group. This conclusion is in adequacy with Munoz’ study on the impact of the average Spanish diet,
food production accounting for circa 2/3rd of the global GHG emissions (Munoz et al., 2010). The most
impacting products categories are Meats, fish and eggs as well as Dairy products, with respectively 406 and
372 kg CO2eq in the average consumer’s basket. The predominance of these two categories of products in
the impact of raw material production is also coherent with Munoz’ results: meat and dairy products contribute
to 54% of the impact of raw material production, while their contribution reaches 62% of raw material
production in the present study.
We acknowledge our model faces several limitations; first regarding the consumption profiles definition,
the lack of discrimination between organic and conventional products and the share of approximated carbon
footprints in the model.
When studying the distribution of organic, conventional and undetermined products, organic consumption
represents 8% of the total weight of organic food basket. This result raises questions about the “organic”
consumer and the little differences among the organic and conventional consumption baskets. However, the
Kantar Worldpanel data did not allow defining a more detailed and representative sample, based on consumers
buying more than 100 or 200 organic products a year for instance. In addition, in the panel, the share of
undetermined products remain high (48% and 25% considering Beverages or not). In particular, fresh (i.e.
unprocessed) products such as meats or fruits and vegetable showed very little distinction of the agricultural
production scheme, while they account for respectively 13 and 17% of the global organic products turnover
in 2010, behind grocery products and beverages (24%) and dairy products (22%) (Agence Bio, 2011); and
their contributions to the global emissions of the baskets are predominant.
Therefore, further research is needed to establish the organic consumption pattern; as both the number of
products in the basket – which may result in a new basket composition – and the precision of the agricultural
production mode of key products have to be improved. This new and more accurate organic profile could be
built thanks to consumers interviews for instance, the consumers being selected among recurrent buyers of
organic food stores.
Finally, still, one third of the global impact results from product carbon footprints that have been approximated,
either by considering the GHG emissions per kg of product of the closest product or by taking
the conventional item carbon footprint when the organic one was missing or the production scheme undetermined.
For instance, 10 emissions factors were modelled from the emissions factors of organic wheat, and as
oranges production mode was not available; the emissions factor of conventional oranges was used. Thus,
not only is the emissions factors accessibility a limit to our assessment, but also the availability of distinct
information between organic and conventional product. This result tends to confirm the uneasiness to conclude
about the potential benefits or drawbacks of consuming organic food compared with conventional
food, providing the low availability of emissions factors for organic food. This also addresses the need to
conduct LCAs comparing the environmental impacts of organic and conventional products. Ideally, the
LCAs conducted should compare the products, the production modes (organic, conventional, integrated) and
the geographical areas (region of a country).
5. Conclusion
Although limitations remain about our definition of the organic pattern, distinctions in the consumption
have been established, resulting in environmental impacts variations. Given the uncertainties of the results no
conclusion can be drawn about the effective benefit of the organic pattern, but the fact that this specific bas-
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