Løgismose Meyers is a Danish Food Group with a goal of contributing to heightening the Danish food culture. Through the two companies Løgismose and Meyers, the food group is active in both producing quality foods, offering culinary courses, consulting and education. Furthermore, they offer their customers culinary experiences in good and healthy meals ranging from ready-made meals to venues and catering.
This project covers the product portfolio of Løgismose Meyers in 2018 and 2019, with a main focus on GHG emissions. The LCA performed follows the ISO standards on LCA: ISO 14040 (2006) and ISO 14044 (2006), but with the exception that the study has not undergone a third-party critical review.
This project follows the procedure defined by the ISO standards, where the assessment is divided into four phases: Definition of goal and scope, Life cycle inventory (LCI), Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), Life cycle interpretation.
Coverage of the project in the Danish newspaper Børsen (in Danish)
Consumers are increasingly demanding products containing palm oil produced without harm to the environment. The industry response to this demand has been the creation of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the development of a certification system to ensure sustainable palm oil production. However, currently there is no scientific evidence of the benefit gained through the RSPO certification schema. This paper quantifies the environmental impacts of RSPO certified and non-certified through a detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of 1 kg of RBD palm oil to factory gate, produced in Indonesia and Malaysia in 2016, to identify potential benefits and trade-offs of RSPO certification. The ISO 14040/14044 compliant LCA is carried out following both a consequential and an attributional LCA approach. The inventory model presents a high level of detail. Primary inventory data describing the certified production system are obtained from RSPO assessment reports, covering 73% (634 estates) of the certified estate, including 111 smallholders, and 58% (165 oil mills) of the certified mills. Data for the total industrial production are drawn from national statistics and scientific literature. The non-certified flows are derived by subtracting the certified flows from the total industry flows. The consequential results show that RSPO certified oil reduces GHG emission by 35% compared to non-certified i.e. 3.41 (2.61–4.48) kg CO2 eq./kg for certified vs 5.34 (3.34–8.16) kg CO2 eq./kg for non-certified. Based on a thorough data quality assessment and uncertainty analysis, this result is deemed sufficiently robust and thus conclusive. Certified production achieves the largest GHG emissions reduction because of higher yields, i.e. less land use per unit of product, less oil palm cultivated on peat soil and higher share of palm oil mill effluents treated with biogas capture technologies. We also found that nature occupation is reduced by 20% in certified production while respiratory inorganic is slightly higher (3%) in certified production, due to the larger use of fertilisers. For other impact categories, results are associated with a larger uncertainty and therefore shall be considered as indicative. Similar results are found in attributional modelling.
This paper presents an improved methodological approach for studying life cycle impacts (especially global warming) from changes in crop production practices. The paper seeks to improve the quantitative assessment via better tools and it seeks to break down results in categories that are logically separate and thereby easy to explain to farmers and other relevant stakeholder groups. The methodological framework is illustrated by a concrete study of a phosphate inoculant introduced in US corn production.
The framework considers a shift from an initial agricultural practice (reference system) to an alternative practice (alternative system) on an area of cropland A. To ensure system equivalence (same functional output), the alternative system is expanded with displaced or induced crop production elsewhere to level out potential changes in crop output from the area A. Upstream effects are analyzed in terms of changes in agricultural inputs to the area A. The yield effect is quantified by assessing the impacts from changes in crop production elsewhere. The field effect from potential changes in direct emissions from the field is quantified via biogeochemical modeling. Downstream effects are assessed as impacts from potential changes in post-harvest treatment, e.g., changes in drying requirements (if crop moisture changes).
An inoculant with the soil fungus Penicillium bilaiae has been shown to increase corn yields in Minnesota by 0.44 Mg ha−1 (~ 4%). For global warming, the upstream effect (inoculant production) was 0.4 kg CO2e per hectare treated. The field effect (estimated via the biogeochemical model DayCent) was − 250 kg CO2e ha−1 (increased soil carbon and reduced N2O emissions) and the yield effect (estimated by simple system expansion) was − 140 kg CO2e ha−1 (corn production displaced elsewhere). There were no downstream effects. The total change per Mg dried corn produced was − 36 kg CO2e corresponding to a 14% decrease in global warming impacts. Combining more advanced methods indicates that results may vary from − 27 to − 40 kg CO2e per Mg corn.
The present paper illustrates how environmental impacts from changes in agricultural practices can be logically categorized according to where in the life cycle they occur. The paper also illustrates how changes in emissions directly from the field (the field effect) can be assessed by biogeochemical modeling, thereby improving life cycle inventory modeling and addressing concerns in the literature. It is recommended to use the presented approach in any LCA of changes in agricultural practices.
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Consumers as well as professional players in the grocery and catering industry are increasingly demanding information on the climate footprint of the foods they buy or sell. From the fall of 2020, consumers as well as professional players in the grocery and catering industry will be able to gather knowledge and inspiration in "The Large Climate Database". The project consists of a professional dialogue phase during the spring of 2020, preparation of a climate database of more than 500 foodstuffs, and publishing and dissemination of the database in Danish and English at the end of 2020. "The Large Climate Database" will be a central tool that can be used, for example, as a basis for a simplified climate labeling system, climate-adjusted recipes, apps for calculating a purchase's climate footprint, school curriculums, upgrading kitchen staff, information campaigns and much more.
Visit the database: https://denstoreklimadatabase.dk/
For more information visit Concito's press-release, public service tv channel and
podcast for the Climate Podcast - by the newspaper Information (all in Danish).
See small video presentation of the project (15 minutes, in English):
We conducted a top-level assessment of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, water, and land use associated to production of the following protein sources:
This was achieved by means of a review of LCA literature, complemented with modelling done specifically for this study.
