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

GROUP 4, SESSION B: CROP PRODUCTION SYSTEMS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
838
122. Grape life cycle assessment: which methodological choices for a
combined assessment with grape quality?
Christel Renaud-Gentié 1,* , Frédérique Jourjon 1 , Marc Benoît 2
1 PRES LUNAM , UMT VINITERA, ESA, UR GRAPPE, 55 rue Rabelais, BP 30748, 49007 Angers Cedex 01
– France, 2 INRA, SAD, UR 055, Aster, 662 avenue Louis Buffet Mirecourt BP 35, 88501 Mirecourt, France,
* Corresponding author. E-mail: c.renaud@groupe-esa.com
Social, market and institutional pressure is growing on wine producers for more environment friendly production
strategies, while high quality wine are more than ever necessary in a very competitive globalised
market. Identification of the best trade-offs between environmental performance of the vineyard management
and quality of the wines would help producers in adapting their technical choices to these requirements. Consequently,
we are building a combined method assessing grape production practices on qualitative and environmental
aspects through the combination of LCA and quality evaluation of the grapes.
Within the LCA results published about wine production (Petti et al.,2010;Vázquez-Rowe et al.,2012), we
have to improve the detailed analysis of the agricultural practices contributions in a wide diversity of technical
management paths and taking into account the entire life of the vineyard.
Grape LCA is calculated in our project for existing contrasted vineyard management strategies in parallel of
quality measurements on grapes. The aim of the project is to identify (i) if trade-offs are needed between
quality and environment and (ii) for which specific part of production process (Renaud et al.,2010). This
poster presents the methodological choices done for LCA application to viticulture in this purpose. It exposes
examples of the choices made.
The main types of vineyard management strategies of Chenin Blanc Grape production for dry PDO wines in
the Middle Loire Valley region, France were determined through typology methods applied on a detailed
survey conducted on 77 diverse parcels. Five main types of vineyard management paths were identified resulting
to the choice of 5 representative winegrowers plots used for collection of grapes and data for LCA.
The key methodological questions about LCA that were answered concern all the steps of LCA process: (i)
Goal and scope definition: the most suitable functional unit for grape production is not only a grape quantity
but also a production surface unit because of the importance of yield in wine quality elaboration (Renaud et
al., 2010).
(ii) System boundaries: the entire life of the vineyard is taken in the system, including pre and post productive
phases of the vineyard management, like vine planting, nursery, uplifting of the vineyard.
(iii) Data collection from the winegrowers and suppliers: all data have been detailed (machines, buildings,
infrastructure, operations, fertilisers, pesticides, fuels, working time, transport) but some have in the future to
be more lightly informed. A data collection tool was built for LCI implementation and direct emissions calculation.
(iv) Inventory: direct emissions calculation models suitable for viticulture have been identified and compared
on literature basis for their choice (see an example in table 1) for pesticides, erosion, nitrogen, phosphorus,
and heavy metals. They are applied for calculation.
(v) Impacts calculation: processes which need to be detailed and calculated specifically for viticulture are
identified and relevant impacts categories for viticulture are chosen.
(vi) Interpretation: contributions analysis, sensitivity analysis and comparisons with literature give information
on which processes need to be more detailed than others through the iterative process of LCA.
This poster is a contribution for LCA practitioners who want to deal with viticulture or more widely perennial
plants. It proposes solutions about the main methodological choices to be made on the agricultural part
of wine production. This study gives an assessment based on detailed data collected on real contrasted vineyard
management systems in order to identify practices contributions for linking them to grapes quality results.
It needs to be confirmed by further iterative calculations and two more vintages of observations.
References
Audsley E, Alber S, Clift R, Cowell S, Crettaz P, Gaillard G, et al. Harmonisation of environmental life cycle
assessment for agriculture, Final Report Concerted Action AIR3-CT94-2028. In: Commission E, editor.
Community Research and Technological Development Programme in the field of “Agriculture and
Agro-Industry, including Fisheries” AIR 3: European Commission DG VI Agriculture; 2003. p. 129.
Birkved M, Hauschild MZ. PestLCI--A model for estimating field emissions of pesticides in agricultural
LCA. Ecol. Modell. 2006;198(3-4):433-51.