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
680
20. Life cycle assessment of an intensive Iberian pig farm
Joel Gonzàlez * , Aitana Santamaria, Emma Fàbrega, Joan Tibau, Assumpció Antón
IRTA, Research & Technology, Food & Agriculture, Spain,
joel.gonzalez@irta.cat
Corresponding author. E-mail:
Iberian pig production has been a major livestock practice in Spain for a long time, offering meat products
destined to a niche market which demands a high sensory quality. Nowadays the most extended system is the
intensive production of the crossbred Iberian x Duroc, reared during at least 10 months of age and slaughtered
at approximately 150 kg live weight.. The recent unfavourable economic situation and increase in feed
price has resulted in the closing at some farms, pushing them to improve their efficiency using the resources.
Within this benchmark, an evaluation of the efficiency of the system is needed to assess farming viability by
means of standardised tools. One of the main pillars of this efficiency is environmental impact, which was
estimated by a Life Cycle Assessment in the present study, to be considered in an integrated sustainability
evaluation. The results should determine weaknesses and strengths of the system, as well as numerical
scores, which could be used as consumer information.
A representative closed cycle farm of Iberian pig production (Iberian x Duroc) located in Catalonia (Alt Empordà)
was selected for the study. It has capacity for 450 sows, 1,120 piglets and 3,000 fatteners. One 150 kg
pig at the farm gate was chosen as a functional unit. The system boundary is defined up to the farm gate,
considering waste disposal, but not considering post stages such as slaughtering or commercialisation. Impact
categories selected were midpoint impact categories defined by the CML (Guinée, et al., 2002).
Primary data were obtained from the representative farm object of the study. ECOGAN software from the
Agriculture Department (MARM, 2011) was used to calculate the NH3, NO2 and CH4 emissions and the
resources used within each production stage. Secondary data were obtained from Ecoinvent database. Origin
of feed ingredients was based on data from cereal producers in Spain. It was assumed that soybean came
from Brazil. The software used for the assessment was the SimaPro version 7.2 (PRé Consultants, 2010),
performing the compulsory phases of classification and characterisation. For the whole closed cycle, data
were collected from the different production stages including gestation, lactation, rearing and fattening, they
were considered as a part of the foreground (Fig. 1).
Table 1 shows the absolute values for each environmental impact category for a 150 kg pig and related to 1
kg of meat. It is important to bear in mind that an Iberian pig is less efficient than conventional pigs with
regard to its conversion rate, and this elevates the values of the impacts because they consume more feed.
Therefore it would be interesting to relate the impacts not only to kg of meat, but also to other quality indexes
such as the percentage of intramuscular fat.
Crop and feed production, including grain and soybean production needed for their manufacture, were shown
to be the main environmental constrains for impact categories such as eutrophication, air acidification and
climate change, while the use of energy within maternity contributed to a larger extent to impacts related to
energy consumption, such as abiotic depletion.
This study also provides information for the main drawbacks regarding the application of the methodology
and will therefore need further research, especially if it is to be used in environmental communication or
labels. Main drawbacks can be summarised as: lack of local datasets to be used in the background system;
agreement and homogenisation among models used in the emission factors estimation, as well as emissions
related to land use for imported feeds; consideration of nutritional qualities as functional units instead of
meat quantity.
References
Ecoinvent, 2010. ecoinvent Data v2.2. Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories.
Guinée, J. B., Gorrée, M., Heijungs, R., Huppes, G., R., K., de Koning, A., Wegener Sleeswijk A., Suh, S.,
Udo de Haes, H., Bruijn, H., Duin, R. v. and Huijbregts, M. A. J., (2002). Handbook on life cycle assessment.
Operational guide to the ISO standards. Dordrecht, The Netherlands. Kluwer.
MARM, 2011. ECOGAN 2009.0.0 Software. Spain.
PRé Consultants, 2010. SimaPro 7.2. Amersfoort. The Netherlands.