From insight to action: Navigating agri-food LCA and footprinting
Unlock the power of LCA
The global food system is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for up to 37% of global emissions. It also places significant pressure on natural resources, including land, water, and biodiversity. As sustainability becomes a growing priority, businesses, governments, and organizations are striving to make food production more environmentally friendly, but where to start? Conducting a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or Footprinting study is a good starting point, as it provides a structured approach to measuring environmental impact across the entire supply chain. However, it can be rather complex, requiring a deep understanding of methodologies, data collection, and interpretation.
LCA and data-driven sustainability insights
Measuring emissions and environmental impacts from agricultural systems can be challenging. Therefore, we rely on internationally recognized methodologies, such as LCA, that evaluates the entire supply chain of food products, from farm to fork. LCA provides a comprehensive view of environmental impacts, enabling informed decision-making and sustainable improvements.
As global sustainability reporting requirements increase, businesses must provide transparent, reliable data on their environmental footprint. Regulations such as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and rising consumer expectations are driving companies toward credible, science-based reporting.
LCA plays a crucial role in this shift, offering data-driven insights that support you:
Identify environmental hotspots
Gain insights into the most impactful stages of your supply chain beyond carbon emissions, including land use, water consumption, biodiversity impacts, and fossil fuel depletion, and identify opportunities to reduce these impacts.
Meet regulations and standards
Ensure compliance with frameworks such as CSRD, EU Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCRs), and other international sustainability reporting and certification requirements.
Support strategic decision-making
Use LCA insights to substantiate your sustainability business case, applying due diligence to assess environmental impacts, guide supply chain decisions, and shape long-term strategies aligned with corporate sustainability goals and stakeholder expectations.
Why agri-food LCAs can be rather complex
LCAs of agricultural and food products and systems come with unique challenges. Factors such as land use change (LUC), allocation methods, and data variability can significantly influence results. To ensure credibility and accuracy, it’s essential to master global standards and methodologies while making informed modelling choices.
Key considerations include:
> Effective functional unit selection
Defining a meaningful basis for comparison
> Setting system boundaries
Determining where the LCA starts and stops for accurate results.
> Choosing the right allocation method
Handling multi-output systems effictively.
> Navigating international standards
Understanding international frameworks, such as EU PEFCRs to align with best practices.
> Addressing agri-food-specific complexities
Including Land Use Change (LUC) reporting, biodiversity impacts, and soil carbon sequestration.
Unlock the power of LCA
How we can help you to give shape to sustainability
Our multidisciplinary team helps you make environmental footprinting and LCA actionable. We can support you with your first LCA research, build sustainability capacity within your organization, set-up a compliant Footprinting Methodology for your sector or organize in-company Footprinting & LCA trainings for your team.
LCA and Footprinting studies
Full spectrum of LCA and footprinting services, from quick internal Screening LCAs to fully Critically Reviewed, externally verified studies.
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Quick insights: Screening LCA
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Robust insights: Full LCA
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Comparable results: Comparative LCA
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External communication & claims: Critictically reviewed LCA
Footprint methodology and standard development
Development of harmonized, sector‑level environmental calculation rules and guidelines (e.g. EU PEFCRs) to help industries standardize credible sustainability assessments.
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EU PEFCR development
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Harmonized sector footprint guidelines
Interim LCA support
Expert LCA services to temporarily replace or support in-house teams, covering product and corporate footprinting, data management, and sustainability reporting.
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Interim LCA consultancy assignments
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Organize your corporate footprint efforts: SBTi FLAG, CSRD, GHG protocol
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Reviewing LCA
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Helpdesk for your Sustainability & Footprinting questions
In-company LCA & Footprinting training
Tailored onsite or online training to build practical LCA and footprinting skills for agri-food teams.
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Foundations of Agri-food LCA
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Corporate Footprinting for Agri-food companies
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Land Use Change (LUC) Accounting
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Animal Production Systems or Crop Cultivation Systems
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Sustainable Nutrition
More information
Reach out
Jeroen Straver
Get in touch with Jeroen to discover how we can support your team with expert LCA and footprinting services.