Agri-footprint - Bugs & Issues
Agri-footprint 5 and Agri-footprint 6.0-6.3
We believe that making the agri-food sector and society more sustainable and healthier begins with accurate and clear information. To facilitate this we developed the LCA-database Agri-footprint. The first version of the database has been released in 2014, followed by yearly updates. Agri-footprint is under continuous development and we are always looking for opportunities to enhance, extend and improve the database. Inevitably, the database contains certain 'bugs & issues'. Our Data & Model team is right on top of these flaws and they are making an effort to solve every issue.
We are convinced that transparency is essential in the development of sustainable agri-food chains, which is why we want to be open about the current 'bugs & issues' in Agri-footprint. Below you find an overview of the 'bugs & issues' related to different Agri-footprint versions, including the solution we envision. And of course, please reach out to us if you want to raise any bug, issue or shortcoming you encountered.
Overview of known bugs & issues in Agri-footprint
Agri-footprint 6.3
Known issues
Process |
Description of issue |
Solution |
| Rapeseed Oil |
Agri-footprint includes 2 rapeseed crushing (solvent) processes: an EU and a US version. The mass balance for these regions is different. In the methodology document, the process for EU is presented. The process for the US is erroneously omitted from the methodology document. |
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| Rapeseed meal | The economic value for rapeseed meal is not updated like it should have been. This means that the old value (of 213$/ton) instead of the new value (275$/ton) is used to calculate the allocation (for both the EU and the US processes). |
Agri-footprint 6.3
Corrected issues
Not yet available in SimaPro
Process |
Description of issue |
Solution |
| Pig system |
Environmental credit for manure removed from pig systems (no credit was awarded for other animal systems). The credit was based on the PEFCR red meat (which was never completed). |
Because of consistency the credit was removed for all pig systems. The 64 manure credit systems are now tagged as obsolete but are still available in the database for users to model impacts of manure in a different way. |
| Palm cultivation | Incorrect peat emissions for palm cultivations. |
Peat emissions for palm cultivations, some corrections were made for cultivations in:
All other countries remained the same. |
Agri-footprint 6.2
Corrected issues
Not yet available in SimaPro
Process |
Description of issue |
Solution |
| Default fishing process |
The default fishing processes (for example “Landed fish, at processing {DK} Economic, U”) now includes “Fish, unspecified, in sea” |
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| Specific fishing processes | Specific fishing processes (for example “Anchoveta, at landing {PE} Economic, U”) fuel use has been replaced from heavy fuel oil (without emissions from combustion) with “Energy, from diesel burned in machinery |
Agri-footprint 6.1
Corrected issues
Not yet available in SimaPro
Process |
Description of issue |
Solution |
| Transportation impact in market mixes | For all market mixes, the transport mode (e.g. truck, barge, train, ship) were aggregated into one default dataset for that mode, neglecting differences in e.g. vehicle size and fuel type used. This causes misrepresentation in transport emissions, particularly for long distances. | |
| Economic allocation for Crude palm oil, crude peanut oil, crude maize germ oil, co-products and derivative products | Prices for palm kernel, crude peanut oil and maize germ meal extracted are wrong, causing economic allocation for the impact to main products to be too low and the impact for the co-product to be too high. | |
| Soybean hulls (“Soybean hull (solvent), proxy market mix, at regional storage {US} Economic”) | Soybean hulls (“Soybean hull (solvent), proxy market mix, at regional storage {US} Economic”)are replaced by the Dutch proxy mix (“Soybean hull (solvent), proxy market mix, at regional storage {NL} Economic”) in the following products:
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| Energy use for a few compound feeds | Incorrect energy values |
Dairy cow compound feed, at processing {US} Economic (per 1000 kg) – energy swapped
Dairy cow compound feed, at processing {NL} Economic (per 930 kg)
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| Calves <1 year ration, at farm {NL} Economic |
The first grass input (“Grass, at farm {NL} Economic”) in “Calves <1 year ration, at farm {NL} Economic” was replaced by “Grass silage, at farm {NL} Economic” |
Agri-footprint 6.0
Corrected issues
Agri-footprint 6.0 is only available in SimaPro 9.4
Process |
Description of issue |
Solution |
| Market mixes |
For market mixes, all transport movements of each transport mode for moving mix components to the market mix country are aggregated into one default movement for that mode, neglecting differences in e.g. vehicle size and fuel type used. This causes misrepresentation in transport emissions, particularly for long distances. |
This has been adapted for Agri-footprint 6.1 |
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Crude palm oil, crude peanut oil, crude maize germ oil, co-products and derivative products |
Prices for palm kernel, crude peanut oil and maize germ meal extracted are wrong, causing economic allocation for the impact to main products to be too low and the impact for the co-product to be too high. |
This has been adapted for Agri-footprint 6.1 |
| Dutch feed compounds containing soy bean hulls | US soybean hulls are used in 3 feed compounds in the Netherlands | This has been adapted for Agri-footprint 6.1 |
| Process: Calves <1 year ration, at farm/NL Economic | The first "Grass, at farm/NL Economic" input should be grass silage | This has been adapted for Agri-footprint 6.1 |
| Emissions for diesel use is not included in fishery activities (only the production of diesel is considered) | The majority of the impact due to fuel combustion is currently not modelled. This leads to lower impact for fish and fish derived products in the database | This has been adapted for Agri-footprint 6.1 |
| Market mixes of soybean expeller, rapeseed expeller and sunflower expeller | Market mixes of these products are composed of the "meal" product | This has been adapted for Agri-footprint 6.1 |
Agri-footprint 5.0
Process |
Description of issue |
Solution |
| Emissions from ammonia as fertilizer for USDA crops | Upstream emissions of ammonia as fertilizer not included for USDA crops (which can be recognized with "US-**" in the database). This means that production of ammona is not included in the cultivation LCI's for USDA crops. Emissions from ammonia are included in the dataset. | USDA crops will either be updated or excluded from Agri-footprint in the future. |
| Methane emissions USDA rice cultivation | Methane emissions are not included in USDA rice cultivations. This significantly lowers the carbon footprint of this product | USDA crops will either be updated or excluded from Agri-footprint in the future. |
| Lime inputs are not included for non-arable crops | Lime as input is not included for all orchard cultivations in AFP. This means that production of lime is not included in the cultivation LCI's for orchards. Emissions from lime are included in the dataset. Arable crops do not have this problem | Impact of lime will be added to new update of Agri-footprint. Impact of lime production is low and the amount of orchard type of crops in Agri-footprint is limited. |
| Grass, at dairy farm/NL | Phosphor emissions from manure and fertilizer mapped to the wrong compartment (soil instead of water) for roughages. Roughages in AFP include: grass, lucerne and fodder beet. | The error has impact on eutrophication impact category only. Roughages will be updated and expanded in the next Agri-footprint update. |
| Pea slurry, at processing/NL Economic | Process of pea wet milling should be using pea flour as a raw material input, while now it uses dry peas. | Will be updated in new Agri-footprint version. |
| Pea protein-concentrate, at processing/NL Economic | Pea flour should be used for pea protein concentrate instead of the pea market mix. | Will be updated in new Agri-footprint version. |
| Bleaching Earth | Wrong transportation distance used for transporting bleaching earth. Bleaching earth used in small quantities for some oil refining processes. | Distance will be corrected in new Agri-footprint version |
| Fertilizer splits for Belgium | Fertilizer splits for Belgium based on data from Belarus. Although the amount of NPK used for Belgian cultivations are correct the total amount of NPK is expressed based on fertilizer splits that are available in Belarus. Most important difference is that Belarus uses urea as the most commonly used nitrogen fertilizer, wheras Belgium uses calcium ammonium nitrate more often and barely uses urea. | This issue has impact on the type of fertilzer use and its production for Belgian cultivations only. It does not have impact on the total amount synthetic fertilizer use for Belgian cultivations and most of the emissions: laughing gas emissions (all related to the amount of N). The only type of emission the error has influence on is the amount of ammonia from fertilizer, since this determined by the type of fertilizer used (Tier 2 emission modelling. |
Future plans for the Agri-footprint database
Our ambition for Agri-footprint is to offer a high quality agricultural database, which is mainly focused on feed and animal production, based on up-to-date data and state of the art methodologies. We want to offer a reliable and transparent database that can be used as a basis for any LCA work.
Agri-footprint 6.0 is now available in SimaPro 9.4. The updated version of Agri-footprint is available through our Tool Platform and openLCA nexus.
What's new?
Agri-footprint 5.0 versus 6.x
- Update of activity data
- Cultivation data (yields, fertilizers, LUC, etc.)
- Market mix data
- Prices meals/oils (allocation)
- Improvement of modelling
- Peat oxidation
- IPCC 2019 rules (previously IPCC 2006)
- Post-harvesting data: country specific
- Regional artificial fertilizer production
- Expansion of animal systems
- From 4 to 37 datasets
- Replacement of background data
- ELCD to ecoinvent