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

GROUP 1, SESSION A: ANIMAL PRODUCTION SYSTEMS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
16. Environmental impact of the pork supply chain depending on
farm performances
Karoline Reckmann * , Joachim Krieter
Institute of Animal Breeding and Husbandry, Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, Germany, Corresponding
author. E-mail: kreckmann@tierzucht.uni-kiel.de
The aim of the study is to figure the effect of changes in farm performances on the environmental impact of
pork production. The environmental assessment was performed using data representing the typical Northern
German pork production in 2010 on the one hand. On the other hand, data of German pig farms with 25%
highest and lowest efficiency in terms of net profit (economic success) was used. The data for the farms was
gathered from an extension service for pig farms in Northern Germany (SSB, 2010). The database of the feed
and slaughtering stage was composed of own data collection from specific companies and of literature. The
system boundaries of the Life Cycle Assessment cover the feed production, pig housing as well as the
slaughtering stage. Infrastructure, packaging, retail and consumption were excluded. The manure produced at
the farm had also a value as a fertiliser, thus substituting synthetic fertiliser. The environmental impact of the
whole production chain was expressed per ‘1 kg pork produced’. Three impact categories were considered:
Global warming potential (GWP), Eutrophication potential (EP) and Acidification potential (AP), expressed
in equivalents (eq).
Table 1 summarises the environmental performance with respect to the three impact categories. The average
pork production results in a GWP of 3.62 kg CO2-eq, an EP of 42 g PO4-eq and an AP of 89 g SO2-eq per kg
pork. A higher efficiency on farm level reduces the estimated environmental impacts of GWP as well as EP.
The GWP is improved by 358 g CO2-eq per kg pork, whereas the reduction of EP reaches 0.37 g PO4-eq per
kg pork. In contrast, the average production results in a 1% increased AP compared to the production with a
lower efficiency. However, the lowest AP arises out of the pork production with an enhanced performance
on farm level. Nguyen et al. (2011) estimated a GWP of 3.1 kg CO2-eq per kg carcass weight produced in
Denmark. These results are in line with ours. In case of higher efficiency, the potential of reducing the GWP
(2.8 kg CO2-eq per kg carcass weight) was shown more clearly than in the present study. This could arise
from the different method used or the fact that the higher efficiency was based on biological parameters.
For estimation of the contribution of these stages to the overall impacts, the production chain was divided
into the stages of feed production, pig housing and slaughtering. Feed production is the main contributor in
the case of GWP with a share of 80% (Fig. 1), followed by pig housing (15%) and slaughtering. The largest
part of Eutrophication is caused by pig housing (51%) and feed production (48%). In the case of AP, pig
housing plays a key role with an amount of 72%. Feed production is responsible for 27% of the AP, whereas
only 1% of the AP originates from the slaughtering process. Over all the shown impact categories, slaughtering
has only a marginal share (1-5%) to the environmental impacts of the pork supply chain.
Further calculations will include different scenarios by varying single parameters on farm level, as e.g. number
of litters per sow and year, feed intake, daily weight gain and feed conversion rate. Results from the different
LCAs will be compared to identify performance parameters with a high effect on the overall impacts.
In order to illustrate the variation of the impacts, Monte Carlo methods will be used for further calculations.
References
Nguyen TLT, Hermansen JE, Mogensen L., 2011. Environmental assessment of Danish pork. Aarhus, Denmark:
Aarhus University.
SSB, 2010. Schweinereport 2010. Schweinespezialberatung Schleswig-Holstein e.V.
Table 1. Results for the impact categories Global Warming Potential (GWP), Eutrophication (EP) and Acidification
Potential (AP) for the three scenarios of pork production, related to 1 kg pork produced.
Impact cate- + 25% farm Average produc- - 25% farm effigory
efficiency tion 2010 ciency
GWP
CO2-eq)
(kg
3.46 3.62 3.67
EP (g PO4-eq) 42.48 42.84 44.88
AP (g SO2eq)
85.41 89.56 89.10
673