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
21. Comparison of environmental impacts of corn or sorghum as geese
feed in foie gras production
Julien Arroyo 1,3 , Laurence Fortun-Lamothe 1,* , Alain Auvergne 1 , Jean-Pierre Dubois 3 , Joël Aubin 2
1 INRA, INPT ENSAT, INPT ENVT, UMR 1289 Tissus Animaux, Nutrition, Digestion, Ecosystème et
Métabolisme, F-31326 Castanet-Tolosan Cedex, France, 2 INRA, Agrocampus Rennes, UMR1069, Sol
Agronomie Spatialisation, 65 rue de Saint Brieuc, CS 84215, F-35042 Rennes Cedex, France , 3 ASSEL-
DOR, Station d'expérimentation appliquée et de démonstration sur l'oie, La Tour de Glane, 24420 Coulaures.
, Corresponding author. E-mail: laurence.lamothe@toulouse.inra.fr
Innovations are needed to improve the sustainability of livestock production systems, i.e. to reduce their
environmental impacts while maintaining or increasing their economic viability. The feed represents the
greatest part of the economic and environmental costs of poultry rearing (Boggia et al., 2010). Therefore,
changing feeding practices, i.e. the choice of raw materials, seems one of the promising ways. Raw materials
should be chosen according to their environmental impacts and availability. To increase the number of raw
materials usable improves the flexibility of systems, limiting the reliance on price fluctuating products. The
feeding of waterfowl in the production of “foie gras” is based in large part on corn as an energy source during
both the rearing and the overfeeding periods. Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) has been chosen to substitute
corn in “foie gras” production. Indeed, this cereal has similar nutritional characteristics to corn’s ones (Sauvant
et al., 2004), but is more drought-resistant. Thus, it is an interesting candidate to reduce the vulnerability
of French agriculture to the water shortage risk (Amigues et al., 2006), by reducing the need of irrigation.
Arroyo et al. (2012) showed that sorghum could be used as goose feed during growing-finishing period (GF
period) and during overfeeding period (O period) of “foie gras” production. The aim of this work was to
evaluate with LCA method, the environmental impacts of the effects of substitution of corn by sorghum during
GF and O periods on “foie gras” production. Attributional LCA was conducted on different scenarios of
partial and total substitution of corn by sorghum, based on experimental data (Arroyo et al., 2012) and the
running on average goose farms. Ecoinvent was used as the source of secondary data, but specific data were
generated for corn, sorghum and goose productions. The impact categories were calculated using mainly
CML2 method: eutrophication (EP, kg PO4- eq.), climate change (CC, kg CO2 eq.), acidification potential
(AP, kg SO2 eq.), terrestrial ecotoxicity (TE, kg 1.4- DCB eq.), cumulative energy demand (CED, MJ), water
use (WU, m 3 ) and land occupation (LO, m 2 per year). The functional unit was 1kg of "foie gras”. The
impact calculation was conducted using SimaPro_ 7.2 software and mass allocation approach. 1kg of “foie
gras” from geese fed with sorghum as the only cereal during both GF and O periods induced lower environmental
impacts than the “foie gras” from the corn fed geese (i.e.: CC: 1,323 vs. 1,471 kg CO2-eq respectively).
For all the impacts, the highest values were observed for 1kg of “foie gras” from geese fed with sorghum
during the G period, due to higher bird mortality during O period (1,623 kg CO2-eq). Using sorghum
during the O period only did not affect the environmental impacts compared to the use of corn (1,427 kg
CO2-eq). Present results suggested that total substitution of corn by sorghum in goose diet offers interesting
perspectives for more sustainable feeding strategy in the production of “foie gras”.
References
Amigues, J.P., Debaeke, P., Itier, B., Lemaire, G., Seguin, B., Tardieu, F., Thomas, A. 2006. Sécheresse et
agriculture. Réduire la vulnérabilité de l’agriculture à un risque accru de manque d’eau. Expertise scientifique
collective, synthèse du rapport, INRA (France), 72pp.
Arroyo, J., Auvergne, A., Dubois, J.P., Bijja, M., Lavigne, F., Fortun-Lamothe, L., 2012. Influence of feeding
sorghum on the growth, gizzard development and carcass traits of growing geese. Animal (in press)
Boggia, A., Paolotti, L., Castellini, C., 2010. Environmental impact evaluation of conventional, organic and
organic-plus poultry production systems using life cycle assessment. World’s Poultr. Sci. J. 66, 95-114.
Sauvant, D., Perez, J.M., Tran, G., 2004. Tables of composition and nutritive value of feed materials: pigs,
poultry, cattle, sheep, goats, rabbits, horses, fish. eds INRA Editions, Paris and Wageningen Academic
Publishers, The Netherlands. 304pp.
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