Combining livestock and tree crops to improve sustainability in agriculture: a case study using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach

Paolotti, Luisa; Boggia, Antonio; Castellini, Cesare; Rocchi, Lucia; Rosati, A.

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.05.024

Cited by 82 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Gibbons et al (2008) showed that the progressive loss of trees in agrarian landscapes has been a global pattern. Nevertheless, agroforestry practices can improve sustainability of farming systems and can, for example, mitigate emissions from the agricultural sector (Paolotti et al, 2016). Therefore, forthcoming EU commitments as expressed in the second amendment of Kyoto Protocol and commitments at the UN Climate Change Conference at Paris in 2015 include agroforestry practices within the Land Use Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) carbon accounting framework (Mosquera-Losada et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Current extent and stratification of agroforestry in the European Union

Herder

Moreno

Mosquera-Losada

et al. 2017

Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment

181

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An accurate and objective estimate on the extent of agroforestry in Europe is critical for the development of supporting policies. For this reason, a more harmonized and uniform Pan-European estimate is needed. The aim of this study was to quantify and map the distribution of agroforestry in the European Union. We classified agroforestry into three main types of agroforestry systems: arable agroforestry, livestock agroforestry and high value tree agroforestry. These three classes are partly overlapping as high value tree agroforestry can be part of either arable or livestock agroforestry. Agroforestry areas were mapped using LUCAS Land Use and Land Cover data . By identifying certain combinations of primary and secondary land cover and/or land management it was possible to identify agroforestry points and stratify them in the three different systems. According to our estimate using the LUCAS database the total area under agroforestry in the EU 27 is about 15.4 million ha which is equivalent to about 3.6% of the territorial area and 8.8% of the utilised agricultural area. Of our three studied systems, livestock agroforestry covers about 15.1 million ha which is by far the largest area. High value tree agroforestry and arable agroforestry cover 1.1 and 0.3 million ha respectively. Spain (5.6 million ha), France (1.6 million ha), Greece (1.6 million ha), Italy (1.4 million ha), Portugal (1.2 million ha), Romania (0.9 million ha) and Bulgaria (0.9 million ha) have the largest absolute area of agroforestry. However the extent of agroforestry, expressed as a proportion of the utilised agricultural area (UAA), is greatest in Please refer to any applicable publisher terms of use.countries like Cyprus (40% of UAA), Portugal (32% of UAA) and Greece (31% of UAA). A cluster analysis revealed that a high abundance of agroforestry areas can be found in the south-west quadrat of the Iberian Peninsula, the south of France, Sardinia, south and central Italy, central and north-east Greece, south and central Bulgaria, and central Romania. Since the data were collected and analysed in a uniform manner it is now possible to make comparisons between countries and identify regions in Europe where agroforestry is already widely practiced and areas where there are opportunities for practicing agroforestry on a larger area and introducing novel practices. In addition, with this method it is possible to make more precise estimates on the extent of agroforestry in Europe and changes over time. Because agroforestry covers a considerable part of the agricultural land in the EU, it is crucial that it gets a more prominent and clearer place in EU statistical reporting in order to provide decision makers with more reliable information on the extent and nature of agroforestry. Reliable information, in turn, should help to guide policy development and implementation, and the evaluation of the impact of agricultural and other policies on agroforestry.Keywords: land use, land cover, high natural and cultural value, high value trees, Land Use/Cover A...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Current extent and stratification of agroforestry in the European Union

Herder

Moreno

Mosquera-Losada

et al. 2017

Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment

181

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“…We omitted the use and disposal phases, hence implementing an LCA "from cradle to gate" (Paolotti et al 2016). All the impacts were calculated considering a functional unit of 1 m 3 of insulating material.…”

Section: Results Of Multiple Criteria Assessment Of Insulating Materimentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple Criteria Assessment of Insulating Materials with a Group Decision Framework Incorporating Outranking Preference Model and Characteristic Class Profiles

et al. 2017

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We present a group decision making framework for evaluating sustainability of the insulating materials. We tested thirteen materials on a model that was applied to retrofit a traditional rural building through roof's insulation. To evaluate the materials from the socio-economic and environmental viewpoints, we combined life cycle costing and assessment with an adaptive comfort evaluation. In this way, the performances of each coating material were measured in terms of an incurred reduction of costs and consumption of resources, maintenance of the cultural and historic significance of buildings, and a guaranteed indoor thermal comfort. The comprehensive assessment of the materials involved their assignment to one of the three preferenceordered sustainability classes. For this purpose, we used a multiple criteria decision analysis approach that accounted for preferences of a few tens of rural buildings' owners. The proposed methodological framework incorporated an outranking-based preference model to compare the insulating materials with the characteristic class profiles while using the weights derived from the revised Simos procedure. The initial sorting recommendation for each material was validated against the outcomes of robustness analysis that combined the preferences of individual stakeholders either at the output or at the input level. The analysis revealed that the most favorable materials in terms of their overall sustainability were glass wool, hemp fibres, kenaf fibres, polystyrene foam, polyurethane, and rock wool. Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10726-017-9549-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. B Miłosz Kadziński

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“…From this point of view, LCA was established as a tool allowing to quantify the environmental impacts of a product and to identify in which phase of its life cycle the most critical issues are concentrated, in order to propose the actions of improvement, leading to a decrease in the environmental impact itself [25].…”

Section: Method: Life Cycle Assessment In the Context Of Circular Ecomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To focus the analysis on the production phase, an LCA 'from cradle to gate' can be performed, from the production of initial inputs to the final product, omitting the phases of product distribution [25]. It is important to point out that, at the present time, the life cycle analysis has not been applied to all the phases that lead to the production of the final Re-Detergent product, but stops at the third stage, that is the one concerning the production of soap from exhausted vegetable oils.…”

Section: Systems Boundaries Of the Lca Study And Main Assumptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Environmental Evaluation within Circular Economy: An Application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Method in the Detergents Sector

Lucchetti¹,

Paolotti²,

Rocchi³

et al. 2019

Environmental and Climate Technologies

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The present work aims to analyse the environmental advantages of a production process that applies circular economy. The study examines a product that is generated through the use of a certain percentage of recovered secondary materials, thus helping to avoid impacts related to the disposal of these materials and preserving the ecosystems from indiscriminate excessive natural resources extraction. The product analysed is an ecological detergent (“Ri-Detersivo” – Re-Detergent), produced by the company Tea Natura, mainly composed of regenerated vegetable oils coming from food industry. The methodology used in this paper is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). A partial LCA will be carried out here, arriving at the saponification phase, and comparing the environmental impacts deriving from the Re-Detergent production process with those of a traditional soap, comparable to that studied in terms of function. The analysis of the case study found that the use of regenerated vegetable oils for the production of soap allows to significantly reduce the environmental impacts compared to the use of coconut oil imported from third countries.

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Combining livestock and tree crops to improve sustainability in agriculture: a case study using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach

Cited by 82 publications

References 43 publications

Current extent and stratification of agroforestry in the European Union

Current extent and stratification of agroforestry in the European Union

Multiple Criteria Assessment of Insulating Materials with a Group Decision Framework Incorporating Outranking Preference Model and Characteristic Class Profiles

The Role of Environmental Evaluation within Circular Economy: An Application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Method in the Detergents Sector

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