5. Life Cycle Assessment for the Agri-Food Sector

The food supply chain has become an important contributor to a number of environmental impacts, and food and drink products are accountable for a significant share of the overall environmental impacts of private consumption. In order for the whole chain to be taken into account, a life cycle approach to environmental assessment is needed; in that framework, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology has been increasingly used to improve the environmental performance of food systems. In this chapter review papers on food LCA case studies were reviewed in terms of methodological key aspects (e.g., functional unit, system boundary, multi-functionality, data, etc.). Moreover, an attempt was made to identify the most critical impacts and life-cycle stages. In the case studies reviewed, different assumptions and methodologies were found and discussed. However, it was not possible to clearly identify one or more environmental impacts as being more important than others. Finally, no sure conclusions were drawn regarding the most impacting stage, although the agricultural one was mentioned most frequently.