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(T/MC265) Finnish food industry involved in LCA data production - Methodological aspects of applying LCA in agriculture. Katajajuuri, Juha-Matti1, Loikkanen, Torsti1, 1 ABSTRACT- Recent international examples of unacceptable defects in the food production chain clearly indicate that there is still a considerable amount of work to be done to ensure safe, healthy, good quality food products for customers. From the perspective of consumer choices, these problems highlight the need for transparent and reliable data on the origin of food products and production processes Finnish players in the food business largely recognise that a purposeful quality policy, integrated with the principles of sustainable development, will be a necessary condition for their future competitiveness in globalizing markets. This challenge can be responded only by creating a strategy with sincere partnerships between different actors of the entire business value chain. The competition in the future markets will necessitate not only the qualified products but also the dissemination of reliable data indicating high environmental quality of foodstuffs. Within this context, Finnish agricultural and food industry in cooperation of trade started to produce LCA data. The first phase of this effort consisted of a pilot study of barley production. LCA methodology was found to be a suitable tool to assess environmental performance of agricultural products. However, LCA methodology has to be further developed to handle the special characteristics of agricultural phenomena. Agricultural processes differs essentially from the considerations of straightforward industrial input-ouput processes. In the pilot case, several efforts to develop the LCA methodology in the case of agricultural products, like consideration of crop rotation and circumstantial factors, were started. Subsequently, in the following phases of the research, the management of data uncertainties and ranges will be an important research area. In addition to the LCA methodology development, issues on disseminating LCA data and related interactive ICT based information systems were considered in the pilot study. The next ongoing phase extends research to the production of other crops as well as milk and meat products. Key words: life cycle assessment, agriculture, food industry, chain management |
