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

GROUP 2, SESSION A: CARBON OR WATER FOOTPRINTS, SOIL, BIODIVERSITY 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
49. Carbon footprint of Canadian dairy products: national and
regional assessments
Xavier P. Vergé 1 , Dominique Maxime 2 , Raymond L. Desjardins 3,* , Yves Arcand 4 , Devon Worth 3
1 Agro-environmental consultant, Ottawa ON, Canada, 2 CIRAIG, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Montréal
QC, Canada, 3 Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Eastern Cereal and Oilseed Research Centre, Ottawa
ON, Canada, 4 Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Food Research and Development Centre, Saint-Hyacinthe
QC, Canada, * Corresponding author. E-mail: ray.desjardins@agr.gc.ca
The production of dairy products such as milk, cheese, butter and yoghurt results in a wide range of greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions per kg of product. A calculator, which was recently developed to estimate the
magnitude of the GHG emission intensities of dairy products from cradle to the exit gate of the processing
plants, at the provincial and national scales, will be presented (Vergé et al., 2012). Estimates based on a regional
assessment of farming and processing systems will be given for eleven dairy products for 2006 (Fig.
1). The on-farm GHG emission estimates, which are based on the IPCC Tier 2 methodologies adapted for
Canadian conditions (e.g. Vergé et al., 2006; Rochette et al., 2008) also account for GHG emissions associated
with farm inputs (Dyer and Desjardins, 2003a, 2003b). Much of this work is based on previous work
from Vergé et al. (2007) and has been improved 1) to account for co-products allocation where relevant; 2)
for a more comprehensive assessment of background processes and to be fed by yearly statistics instead of
the five-year Census of agriculture data. For the processing phase, a top-down approach (e.g. for energy inputs
gathered from yearly statistics) is used, and data gaps (e.g. packaging) have been filled with North-
American generic data (Vergé et al., 2011). The dairy plant is seen as a multi-product output plant and coproducts
allocation is performed using the physico-chemical approach described by Feitz et al. (2007), which
has been modified to incorporate the solids characteristics (i.e. protein and fat content) of Canadian dairy
products (Maxime et al., 2011). The contribution of each step to the overall carbon footprint of dairy products
will be discussed. Information on the magnitude of the carbon footprint is likely to become important
information for dairy producers for selling their products on the international scene.
References
Dyer, J., and R.L. Desjardins. 2003a. Simulated farm field work, energy consumption and related greenhouse
gas emissions in Canada. Biosystems Engineering 85(4), 503-513.
Dyer, J.A. and R. L. Desjardins. 2003b. The impact of farm machinery management on the greenhouse gas
emissions from Canadian agriculture. Journal of Sustainable Agriculture 22(3), 59-74.
Feitz A.J., Lundie, S., Dennien, G., Morain, M., Jones M., 2007. Generation of an Industry-specific Physicochemical
Allocation Matrix. Application in the Dairy Industry and Implications for Systems Analysis. Int.
J. LCA 12(2), 109-117.
Maxime D., Vergé, X., Arcand, Y., Desjardins, R., 2011. A cradle-to-gate assessment of the carbon footprint
of Canadian dairy products. LCA XI Conference, October 4-6, 2011, Chicago IL (USA).
Rochette P., Worth, D.E., Huffman, E.C., Brierley, J.A., McConkey, B.G., Yang, J., Hutchinson, J.J., Desjardins,
R.L., Lemke, R. and Gameda, S., 2008. Estimation of N2O emissions from agricultural soils in
Canada. II. 1990 2005 inventory. Can. J. Soil Sci. 88, 655-669.
Vergé, X. P. C., Worth, D., Hutchinson, J. J. and Desjardins, R. L. 2006. Greenhouse gas emissions from
agro-ecosystems in Canada. Methane emissions: Methodology for calculations. Pages 38 Technical Report.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, ON.
Vergé X.P.C., Dyer, J.A., Desjardins, R.L., Worth, D., 2007. Greenhouse gas emissions from the Canadian
dairy industry in 2001. Agricultural Systems, 94(3), 683-693.
Vergé X.P.C., Maxime D., Dyer, J. A., Desjardins, R.L. and Arcand Y., 2011. Carbon footprint model for
Canadian livestock production - Presentation and application to the dairy sector. Technical report (August
2011); Contract # 01E86-110116/001/SS. 37p.
Vergé X.P.C., Maxime D., Dyer, J. A., Desjardins, R.L. and Arcand Y., 2012. Carbon footprint calculators
for Canadian livestock production – The ULICEES and (cafoo)² models. Technical report (January 2012);
Contract # 01E86-110116/001/SS. 47p.
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