Environmental Pressures Embodied in the French Cereals Supply Chain

Abstract

International audienceFrance is the second largest exporter of cereals in the world. Although the cereals supply chain is an asset for the country's economy and employment, it is at the same time responsible for a number of pressures on the local and global environment including greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and stresses on water quality and quantity. This article aims at evaluating this situation from an environmental point of view by linking productions occurring in French regions with consumption occurring in France and abroad. Based on previous work on Material Flow Analysis, we use an Absorbing Markov Chain model to study the fate of French cereals and link worldwide consumption to environmental pressures along the supply chain, that is, induced by production, transformation or transport. The model is based on physical supply and use tables and distinguishes between 21 industries, 22 products, 38 regions of various spatial resolution (22 French regions, 10 countries, 6 continents) and 4 modes of transport. Energy use, GHG emissions, land use, use of pesticides and blue water footprint are studied. Illustrative examples are taken in order to demonstrate the versatility of the results produced, for instance: Where and under what form does local production end up? How do regions compare relatively to their production and consumption footprints? These results are designed to be a first step towards scenario analysis for decision-aiding that would also include socioeconomic indicators. Examples of such scenarios are discussed in the conclusion

Linking Local Consumption to Global Impacts

“…This group of articles focuses on environmental impacts associated with a range of economic sectors, including cereal production in France (Courtonne et al. ), crops in China (Zhang L. et al. ), Spanish tourism (Cazcarro et al.…”

“…), material flow analysis (MFA) (Courtonne et al. ), optimization tools (Zhang Y. et al. ), life cycle assessment (LCA) (Okadera et al.…”

“…The article by Courtonne and colleagues (), “Environmental pressures embodied in the French cereals supply chain,” links energy use, land use, pesticide use, blue water, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions with cereal production at the regional level to domestic and global impacts. They calculate global supply‐chain impacts of French cereal production by accounting for pressures generated during extraction, production, and transportation by extending an existing MFA model at the level of French regions.…”

“…This group of articles focuses on environmental impacts associated with a range of economic sectors, including cereal production in France (Courtonne et al 2016), crops in China (Zhang L. et al 2016a), Spanish tourism (Cazcarro et al 2016), the global higher education sector (Lang and Kennedy 2016), energy production in China (Zhang Y. et al 2016b) and Thailand (Okadera et al 2015), sanitation services, and export production (Islam et al 2016;Jiang et al 2016). Multiregional input-output (MRIO) tables are used or discussed in more than half of the articles, other approaches such as panel data regression (Islam et al 2016), material flow analysis (MFA) (Courtonne et al 2016), optimization tools (Zhang Y. et al 2016b), life cycle assessment (LCA) (Okadera et al 2015), and ecological network analysis (Zhang Y. et al 2016b), sometimes in combination with an input-output (I-O) table (IOT).…”

Analyzing the vulnerabilities and capabilities of wealth creation activities in the Maurienne valley in the French Alps

“…The estimation of environmental pressures is performed by coupling material flows to Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) databases (ISO 2006). The method used is straightforward (Courtonne et al 2016): we multiply a pressure intensity per unit mass (e.g., GHG emissions per liter of milk, from LCA) with a total volume or mass (e.g., total volume of milk produced per year). We rely on the Agribalyse LCA database (Koch and Salou 2016).…”