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

PARALLEL SESSION 4C: CROP PRODUCTION SYSTEMS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Parallel session 4c: Crop Production Systems
State of the art of LCA application in the fruit sector
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
Alessandro K. Cerutti 1 , Simona Bosco 2 , Gabriele L. Beccaro 1 , Cristiana Peano 1 , Bruno Notarnicola 3 ,
Giancarlo Bounous 1
1 Department of Arboriculture, University of Torino, Via Leonardo da Vinci, 44 – 10095 Grugliasco (TO), Italy
2 Institute of Life Sciences – Scuola Superiore S. Anna, Piazza Martiri della Libertà, 33 - 56127 Pisa, Italy
3 II Faculty of Economics, Taranto, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Piazza Umberto I, 1 - 70121 Bari, Italy
Corresponding author. E-mail: alessandro.cerutti@unito.it
ABSTRACT
This paper critically reviews LCA studies in fruit production and distribution systems as a part of the results of the work carried out
by the Agri-Food working group of the “Rete Italiana LCA” (Italian LCA Network) – fruit products subgroup. Most used features of
LCA application in the fruit sector are investigated in order to describe a specific research framework and to suggest standardisation
in some specific aspects of the evaluation.
Keywords: fruit products, orchard, fruit cultivars, sustainable production, sustainable distribution, retail systems
1. Introduction
In 2010, world production of fruit was 609,213,512 t, mostly concentrated in Asia (52%) and America
(22%) (FAOSTAT, 2012). In Europe, the same year, there were produced 67,254,709 t of fruit (about 11%
of the fruit produced in the world), with significant contributions by Italy (25.14% of the fruit produced in
Europe), Spain (22.57%) and France (12.93%). The important role played by the Asian markets is even more
evident if we analyse the production trends of the last 10 years: while America, Europe, Africa and Oceania
have a fairly constant fruit production, in Asia it has increased by about 55%, making China and India the
highest producers of fruits in the world with respectively 20.06% and 13.92% of the world production.
Fruit products are generally considered to be some of the less environmental impacting foods in occidental
diets. For example, Carlsson-Kanyama et al., (2003), quantified the energy consumption of different diets
and evaluated an average of 5 MJ per kg of fruit in season (26 MJ per kg of fruit out of season), 15 MJ per
kg of vegetables, 17 MJ per kg of bread and flour products, 33 MJ per kg of dairy products, 37 MJ per kg of
meat, and 75 MJ per kg of fish products. Furthermore, in several works that focus on the carbon footprint of
different food choices, it is reported that the fruit category is one with the least environmental impact (e.g.
Wallén et al., 2004, Berners-Lee et al., 2012). However, these works consider results in environmental assessment
of generic fruit productions, which takes no account of specific issues of orchard systems and fruit
supply chains. Indeed, different results may arise considering the production protocol (e.g. conventional vs
organic), the production site (specific soil and climatic conditions affect yields and agronomic performances)
or the retailing system (long cold storage may dramatically influence the environmental performance of the
product).
2. Methods
The modern food production has a great heterogeneity associated with high levels of specialisation and
complexity. These features inevitably reflect on methodologies in the application of LCA to food products
and agro-systems (Notarnicola et al., 2011). It is therefore important to study the works that have been already
completed for standardise the application protocols and make appropriate comparison among results.
In order to assess papers that reflect the mainstream ideas about application of LCA in fruit systems, just
peer-reviewed papers from international journals and conference proceedings were considered. We preferentially
included studies that considered the part of the life cycle until the fruit was produced. Studies that considered
the whole production of derivates (e.g. fruit juice production) were only included if they added to the
analysis of the plantation stage.
The review covers all main aspects for conducting an LCA in fruit production system; in particular the
following characteristics were considered: objectives, system boundaries, product considered, functional
unit, data origin, life-cycle-based methodology adopted and environmental impact assessment method. The
evaluation on the objectives was conducted considering eight objectives highlighted from the general literature
on LCA applications in the food sector (not just fruit production). 1) Profile the environmental burden of
a fruit product, in which a specific production is evaluated and results are related to the case study without
meaning of generalisations. 2) Identify the environmental hot spots in production systems performance; considering
the different field operations and stages of the system. 3) Describe management strategies to increase
environmental performance; this focus is usually applied after the objective 2 in order to give practical
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