Title
Life Cycle Assessment of pig production: A case study in Galicia
Date Issued
20 January 2017
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
research article
Author(s)
University of Santiago de Compostela
Publisher(s)
Elsevier Ltd.
Abstract
The environmental assessment of a pig farming system from a cradle-to-farm gate perspective was carried out in this study. To do so, two separated farms destined to the weaning and fattening of pigs were analysed in Galicia (Northwest Spain). The standard framework of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was followed to assess the environmental performance of the global process. Six impact categories were selected, including climate change (CC), terrestrial acidification (TA), freshwater eutrophication (FE), marine eutrophication (ME), agricultural land occupation (ALO) and fossil depletion (FD). The edible protein energy return on investment ratio (ep-EROI) was also considered. The fattening farm related activities were the main contributor to the global environmental burdens in almost all impact categories, with contributions higher than 72%. Both concentrate feed production and on-farm emissions were detected as the principal hotspots, mainly due to the burdens associated with concentrate feed ingredients production as well as those derived from the manure management process, respectively. The characterisation results in terms of CC (3.4 kg CO2 eq), FD (12.5 MJ) and ALO (5.0 m2 yr) were consistent with similar European LCA studies on pigmeat production while uncertainty in LCA choices was the main responsible of minor variability on TA, FE and ME. The ep-EROI value (7.3%) was also in line with published data. Due to the relevance of concentrate feed production on the global environmental profile, several feeding strategies were proposed as potential environmental improvements, of which the introduction of local ingredients seemed the most promising alternative.
Start page
4327
End page
4338
Volume
142
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ciencias del medio ambiente
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85006367899
Source
Journal of Cleaner Production
Resource of which it is part
Journal of Cleaner Production
ISSN of the container
09596526
Sponsor(s)
The authors M.D. Fernandez and M.R. Rodriguez belong to the Galician Competitive Research Group GPC2014/072, and acknowledge funding by the regional government Xunta de Galicia and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) (2007-13) (Ref. 10MRU291013PR).
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción CientÃfica
Scopus