The importance of including soil carbon changes, ecotoxicity and biodiversity impacts in environmental life cycle assessments of organic and conventional milk in Western Europe

Type de document
journalArticle
Langue source
Anglais
Titre français
Titre anglais
The importance of including soil carbon changes, ecotoxicity and biodiversity impacts in environmental life cycle assessments of organic and conventional milk in Western Europe
Auteur(s)
  • KNUDSEN Marie Trydeman
  • DORCA-PREDA Teodora
  • DJOMO Sylvestre Njakou
  • PEÑA Nancy
  • PADEL Susanne
  • SMITH Laurence G.
  • ZOLLITSCH Werner
  • HÖRTENHUBER Stefan
  • HERMANSEN John E.
Editeur(s)
Autre(s)
Id
QL7EDVFB
Version
2750
Date ajout
22 décembre 2020 13:15
Date modification
22 décembre 2020 13:15
Résumé anglais
Estimates of soil carbon changes, biodiversity and ecotoxicity have often been missing from life cycle assessment based studies of organic dairy products, despite evidence that the impacts of organic and conventional management may differ greatly within these areas. The aim of the present work was therefore to investigate the magnitude of including these impact categories within a comprehensive environmental impact assessment of organic and conventional dairy systems differing in basic production conditions. Three basic systems representative of a range of European approaches to dairy production were selected for the analysis, i.e. (i) low-land mixed crop-livestock systems, (ii) lowland grassland-based systems, (iii) and mountainous systems. As in previous publications, this study showed that when assessing climate change, eutrophication and acidification impact organic milk has similar or slightly lower impact than conventional, although land-use is higher under organic management. Including soil carbon changes reduced the global warming potential by 5–18%, mostly in organic systems with a high share of grass in the ration. The impacts of organic milk production on freshwater ecotoxicity, biodiversity and resource depletion were 2, 33 and 20% of the impacts of conventional management, respectively, across the basic systems considered. The study highlights the importance of including biodiversity, ecotoxicity and soil carbon changes in life cycle assessments when comparing organic and conventional agricultural products. Furthermore, the study shows that including more grass in the ration of dairy cows increases soil carbon sequestration and decreases the negative impact on biodiversity.
Note
None
CRAW tags
  • AB - Modalité bio
  • FREDO biologie et travail du sol
  • FREDO durabilité
  • GEO Europe
  • biodiversité
  • comparaison
  • lait
  • life cycle assessment
WEB tags
  • biodiversity
  • dairy
  • ecotoxicity
  • LCA
  • organic
  • soil carbon
Titre de la publication
Journal of Cleaner Production
Volume
215
Pages
433-443
Date caractères
April 1, 2019
Date publication
1 avril 2019
Doi
10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.12.273 Le DOI est une URL unique de référencement d'une publication. Il est donc plus fiable et permanent qu'une URL classique
Issn
0959-6526 L’ISSN est un code de 8 chiffres servant à identifier les journaux, revues, magazines, périodiques de toute nature et sur tous supports, papier comme électronique.