Environmental Impact Assessment of Agricultural and Food Production Systems Using the Life Cycle Assessment Methodology

Dear Colleagues,

Currently, the international consensus is broad and in agreement on identifying the causes of significant environmental impacts in the food supply chains. Global warming is an especially crucial issue in this context, related to energy and materials use (e.g., fertilizers, refrigerants, plastics, fossil fuels). The environmental impact is generally attributable to the inefficient use of production inputs (materials and energy), losses related to food loss in the upstream stage, food waste downstream, and waste management linked to packaging. For the reasons mentioned, there is a growing interest in the study of these supply chains to identify specific critical points for proposing measures to reduce their environmental impact. These studies are, in most cases, conducted using the LCA method, a standardized procedure recognized globally and used both in the academic field and increasingly also by legislators. Although the procedure is based on ISO standards, the method gives practitioners flexibility in choosing some relevant elements, particularly the system boundaries, specific impact categories and LCIA methods (for calculating the impact), and allocation procedures. Therefore, it is useful to develop a wide range of studies that apply this methodology to different agri-food chains to increase the case studies and fill the knowledge gaps on the variability of the results to assist policymakers, industries, and consumers in making better environmental decisions. This implies that LCI and LCA studies would be needed focusing on: agricultural production aimed at human and animal consumption; the production of non-food products starting from agri-food chain wastes; the logistics of transport, storage and processing and packaging of the raw output, semi-finished ingredients and final products; food waste management options and technologies; production of electricity or biofuels starting from waste or agri-food waste. This Special Issue aims to promote the implementation of LCA analysis, mainly for the agricultural and agri-food sector.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• LCA of food products;
• LCA of non-food agricultural products (e.g., energy from biomasses, feed production, active ingredients);
• Comparative LCA of different options of food residue valorization;
• Comparison of different production systems of similar/same product;
• Cradle to grave, cradle to gate or gate to gate LCA analysis of agricultural production;
• Primary production and elaboration ecodesign;
• Life cycle inventory for food products and services;
• Comparison of different life cycle impact assessment methods;
• Single and multi-issue LCIA methods analysis;
• Midpoint and endpoint LCA analysis;
• LCA applied to crop production, transportation systems, food processing, different packaging systems, retail and food waste management;
• Analysis on different allocation procedures in LCA.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Daniele Duca
Dr. Alessio Ilari
Guest Editors

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• LCA
• carbon footprint
• global warming
• water footprint
• waste management
• food sustainability
• residue valorization
• bioenergy
• feed sustainability