Relating life cycle assessment indicators to gross value added for Dutch dairy farms

Thomassen, M.A.; Dolman, M.A.; Calker, K.J. van; Boer, I.J.M. de

doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2009.02.011

Cited by 146 publications

(107 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Therefore, a positive relationship has been found between economic and environmental performance. This finding falls into line with previous studies searching for possible trade-offs between environmental and economic performance (Mouron et al, 2006b;Thomassen et al, 2009;Jan et al, 2012). …”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

“…However, the results from LCA studies are affected by different sorts of variations. In fact, some studies (Mouron et al, 2006a;da Silva et al, 2010;Thomassen et al, 2009) have highlighted the variations that exist between the farms or scenarios within the same type of production system, even within the same region. A way to tackle this variability is to define representative systems and to quantify the uncertainty linked to the variability by using Monte-Carlo analysis (Basset-Mens et al, 2006;Basset-Mens et al, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…But, as Norris (2001) already stated, the separation of environmental assessment from economic analysis limits the influence and relevance of LCA for decision-making, and does not characterize the important relationships and trade-offs between the economic and life cycle environmental performance of alternative product design decision scenarios. Since then, several studies have examined the relationship between environmental efficiency and profits in agricultural production (Tzilivakis et al, 2005;Thomassen et al, 2009;Jan et al, 2012).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Influence of Management Practices on Economic and Environmental Performance of Crops. A Case Study in Spanish Horticulture

Fenollosa

Ribal

Lidón

et al. 2014

Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems

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Influence of management practices on economic and environmental performance of crops.A case study in Spanish horticulture. AbstractThis paper assesses the effect of management practices on the environmental and economic performance of tigernut production in Spain. Tigernut is a horticultural crop grown in a very limited area with homogenous climate and soil; thus the influence of these surrounding factors on the agricultural practices and their subsequent impact can be overlooked. From an environmental perspective, the variability among farms was much greater than the one of the costs. A principal component analysis showed that keeping some impacts low would also decrease the costs. Results highlight how proper management leads to both relatively low environmental impacts and costs.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 81%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Influence of Management Practices on Economic and Environmental Performance of Crops. A Case Study in Spanish Horticulture

Fenollosa

Ribal

Lidón

et al. 2014

Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems

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“…This is the common process based EFA and several researchers applied this approach (e.g. Thomassen et al, 2009;van der Werf et al, 2007;Wada, 1993). In agricultural systems, mass units are most commonly used, such as 1 tonne of produced food at the farm gate or 1 kg of produced food at the beginning of the consumer phase.…”

Section: Ecological Footprint Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multifunctional Ecological Footprint Analysis for assessing eco-efficiency: a case study of fruit production systems in Northern Italy

Cerutti

Beccaro

Bagliani

et al. 2013

Journal of Cleaner Production

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Sustainable farming in the fruit production systems of the Piemonte Region of Northern Italy was examined using a multifunctional Ecological Footprint based method. The analysis is based on the quantification of four different ecological footprint applications related to different functional units:tons of product, nutrient content in the fruit produced, hectare of crop and 1000 € of revenue. Of the major fruit production in the region, apricot and nectarine show the best overall performance from an ecological and economic point of view. This result is mainly due to the low input requirements of the cultivation processes, combined with a good product mass and the high market value of the fruit.Kiwifruit production had the worst overall ranking due to the high requirement of agronomical inputs and a low market value of the final product. The problems and the key aspects of a multifunctional assessment are discussed from a methodological point of view. Results highlight that standard Ecological Footprint Analysis alone would not allowed to evaluate the complete environmental profile of the different production systems.

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“…It has also been considered as a key principle of agroecology for animal systems (Dumont et al, 2013), as well as a strategy to improve their resilience (Darnhofer, 2010). However, few studies have focussed on input self-sufficiency of dairy farms, although dairy production usually depends on many inputs (Thomassen et al, 2009). Moreover, existing studies have analysed feed self-sufficiency without including other inputs such as mineral fertilisers or veterinary products (see, for instance, Paccard et al, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of input self-sufficiency in the economic and environmental sustainability of specialised dairy farms

Lebacq

Baret

Stilmant

2015

Animal

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Increasing input self-sufficiency is often viewed as a target to improve sustainability of dairy farms. However, few studies have specifically analysed input self-sufficiency, by including several technical inputs and without only focussing on animal feeding, in order to explore its impact on farm sustainability. To address this gap, our work has three objectives as follows: (1) identifying the structural characteristics required by specialised dairy farms located in the grassland area to be self-sufficient; (2) analysing the relationships between input self-sufficiency, environmental and economic sustainability; and (3) studying how the farms react to a decrease in milk price according to their self-sufficiency degree. Based on farm accounting databases, we categorised 335 Walloon specialised conventional dairy farms into four classes according to their level of input self-sufficiency. To this end, we used as proxy the indicator of economic autonomy -that is, the ratio between costs of inputs related to animal production, crop production and energy use and the total gross product. Classes were then compared using multiple comparison tests and canonical discriminant analysis. A total of 30 organic farms -among which 63% had a high level of economic autonomy -were considered separately and compared with the most autonomous class. We showed that a high degree of economic autonomy is associated, in conventional farms, with a high proportion of permanent grassland in the agricultural area. The most autonomous farms used less input -especially animal feeding -for a same output level, and therefore combined good environmental and economic performances. Our results also underlined that, in a situation of decrease in milk price, the least autonomous farms had more latitude to decrease their input-related costs without decreasing milk production. Their incomes per work unit were, therefore, less impacted by falling prices, but remained lower than those of more autonomous farms. In such a situation, organic farms kept stable incomes, because of a slighter decrease in organic milk price. Our results pave the way to study the role of increasing input self-sufficiency in the transition of dairy farming systems towards sustainability. Further research is required to study a wide range of systems and agro-ecological contexts, as well as to consider the evolution of farm sustainability in the long term.

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Relating life cycle assessment indicators to gross value added for Dutch dairy farms

Cited by 146 publications

References 20 publications

Influence of Management Practices on Economic and Environmental Performance of Crops. A Case Study in Spanish Horticulture

Influence of Management Practices on Economic and Environmental Performance of Crops. A Case Study in Spanish Horticulture

Multifunctional Ecological Footprint Analysis for assessing eco-efficiency: a case study of fruit production systems in Northern Italy

Role of input self-sufficiency in the economic and environmental sustainability of specialised dairy farms

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