Deforestation is one of the biggest issues facing the global agriculture production system and a big contributor to climate change worldwide. A well-known example is the clearance of forests to cultivate crops, such as soybean and oil palm. Globally, forest coverage continues to decrease by an astonishing average of 4.7 million hectares every year (FAO, 2020).
Within Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies it is often a requirement to report the emissions emerging from Land Use Change (LUC) separately. This can become rather complex because data availability is limited. Many studies provide global or country-specific estimations based on statistics or satellite imagery. However, for LCA researchers it can be challenging to translate this impact into specific crops from specific countries due to a lack of primary data.
We specifically designed our LUC Impact products to address this challenge and provide solutions.