Markanvändning och förändringar i markkol kan ha en stor påverkan på klimatpåverkan från livsmedelsproduktion. En vanlig metod för att beräkna klimatpåverkan av livsmedel är livscykelanalys (LCA). Här räknar man ihop alla utsläpp från produktionskedjan till ett tal.

Det finns idag dock ingen konsensus kring hur vi bör räkna med markkol i LCA vilket innebär att många studier helt enkelt inte tar med markkol eller gör väldigt olika val vilket försvårar tolkning av resultaten. Det finns också en begreppsförvirring som gör det svårt att kommunicera kring markkol och dess effekter.

I denna rapport ger vi en bakgrund till problemen, varför det är så svårt att räkna med markkol. Vi gör ett försök att reda ut begreppen, och att ge några råd för hur markkol kan inkluderas i LCA. Rapporten vänder sig till utförare av LCA men även till dig som vill veta mer om markkol i LCA på ett generellt plan och för att kunna tolka resultat.

I rapporten delar vi upp markkolsförändringar som kan ske på fyra principiellt olika nivåer:1. Ändring mellan olika kategorier av markanvändning, till exempel från skog till jordbruksmark.2. Odling av en mark som inte är i jämvikt, till exempel att bruka en torvmark eller mark som bytt kategori för länge sen men som fortfarande inte kommit i jämnvikt.3. Ändring i marknyttjande, till exempel byte av gröda från ettåriga till fleråriga grödor.4. Att ändra eller införa skötselåtgärder, till exempel tillförsel av organiskt material.

För att inkludera markkolsförändringar i LCA, behövs tre steg (1) uppskatta ändringen i markkol (2) fördela påverkan över tid och (3) beräkna klimatpåverkan. I rapporten går vi systematiskt igenom dessa tre steg och pekar ut vilka svårigheter som finns.Det är svårt att ge specifika råd kring markkol, då alla val är tätt kopplade till syftet med studien som ska utföras. Vi tycker att det viktigaste är, att LCA-utövaren är medveten om de olika alternativen i varje steg och tydligt beskriver och motiverar sina val, så att det för slutanvändaren av resultaten är tydligt vad som ligger grund för resultaten.

Seafood has an important role to play to achieve a sustainable food system that provides healthy food to a growing world population. Future seafood production will be increasingly reliant on aquaculture where feed innovation is essential to reduce environmental impacts and minimize feed and food competition. This study aimed to investigate whether a novel single cell protein feed ingredient based on Paecilomyces variotii grown on a side stream from the forest industry could improve environmental sustainability of farmed rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) by replacing the soy protein concentrate used today. A Life Cycle Assessment including commonly addressed impacts but also the rarely assessed biodiversity impacts was performed. Furthermore, feeding trials were included for potential effects on fish growth, i.e., an assessment of the environmental impacts for the functional unit ‘kg feed required to produce 1 kg live-weight rainbow trout’. Results showed that the best experimental diet containing P. variotii performed 16–73 % better than the control diet containing soy protein concentrate in all impact categories except for energy demand (21 % higher impact). The largest environmental benefits from replacing soy protein with P. variotii in rainbow trout diets was a 73 % reduction of impact on biodiversity and halved greenhouse gas emissions. The findings have high relevance for the aquaculture industry as the production scale and feed composition was comparable to commercial operations and because the effect on fish growth from inclusion of the novel ingredient in a complete diet was evaluated. The results on biodiversity loss from land use change and exploitation through fishing suggest that fishery can dominate impacts and exclusion thereof can greatly underestimate biodiversity impact. Finally, a novel feed ingredient grown on side streams from the forest industry has potential to add to food security through decreasing the dependence on increasingly scarce agricultural land resources. 

The increased recognition of inter-relationships between the environmental and health effects of food has resulted in a new fast-growing research area. Development of methods for integrated analysis of environmental and nutritional impacts is essential to facilitate policy decisions and actions for sustainable food systems. Dietary quality scores is one of the methods suggested to combine environmental and nutritional assessments of foods, meals and diets. This systematic review provides an overview of how dietary quality scores are used in environmental sustainability studies of food products and diets. The review includes 24 articles applying 20 different types of dietary quality scores. We describe current approaches used to combine environmental and nutritional assessments, discuss methodological choices of importance and their impact on results, and identify research gaps that require further efforts to push the current frontier of knowledge. Based on our analysis we identify two different categories of dietary quality scores and four approaches used to integrate environmental and nutritional assessments. There is a large number of methods available to quantify a dietary quality score: which one is chosen as well as how they are combined with environmental assessments can affect the results, and hence also the conclusions of which foods that are more sustainable to eat. This is critical to understand for the set-up of studies and for the interpretation of results and drawing conclusions. Our categorization of existing methods used, how they differ, what applications they are suited for, and which methodological challenges they involve increases the understanding of what analyzes are possible today and point out areas where methods are lacking and where more research is required. Continued efforts are needed to bring about a transition to sustainable food systems that do not exceed the planets ecological limits and promote healthy populations. This systematic review provides guidance for future use and development of methods within the field of sustainable nutrition.

The Life Cycle Assessment methodology often applies a product perspective but can be used to assess novel production technologies by comparing novel products with a baseline product, as long as the functional unit of the product is considered to be the same. There is increasing environmental concerns in society and pressures on industry to take into account their impact on the environment. Tools are available for this, but not tools adapted to specific industry needs. The reasons to use LCA are foremost to guide the development towards the most sustainable solutions and to evaluate the market potential from an environmental perspective. Challenges arise when applying LCA in early development stages, e.g. getting access to recent development data, to increase commitment and incentives to take early LCA results into consideration, to present results in an attractive way etc. LCA calculations must also keep up with the sometimes rapid development. In order to meet these challenges interactive report software have been introduced to industrial partners (non-LCA experts) in an EU project called FutureFood (Grant agreement no: 635759). The project goal is to develop a new processing technology for foods (CO₂ drying). In order to meet the LCA related challenges a platform has been used that is developed by PRé Consultants (Pre, 2016?), called Share and Collect. It allows LCA experts to develop tools for non-experts so that users are able to alter parameters in the LCA model and assess the result of the changes. It is done by providing the industrial partners with an intuitive web based graphical user interface (GUI). When a user changes input data in the GUI, parameter values also change in the model, an LCA calculation engine runs the model and the GUI presents the corresponding results. In the project a tool for assessing the processing technology has been developed and the industrial partners  are provided rights to access the tools and create ‘what if’ scenarios. Examples of changes are change of electricity production, transport distances, transport types or modes, raw material source, packaging, production resource or energy efficiency etc. The tool has been evaluated by the non-LCA expert industrial partners, and the first review results show that it is user friendly, visually appealing and interesting in its interactive way because of the instant feedback of results. Tailored models such as the ones developed in the project have the potential to support knowledge based decisions in innovation projects in companies.

Förbättrade produktionsresultat inom svensk grisproduktion, användning av biproduk-ter och djurhälsans betydelse har analyserats i en livscykelanalys. Klimatavtrycket för kött från en svensk medelgris är 2,54 kg koldioxidekvivalenter/kg slaktvikt, vilket är bland de lägsta jämfört med tillgängliga internationella studier. Produktionen av foder står för 54 % av klimatavtrycket och hanteringen av stallgödsel för 36 %. Av foderstaten till den svenska integrerade medelslaktgrisen utgjorde biprodukter 10 % och soja 4 %. Baserat på antalet dagars förlängd uppfödningstid för sjuka grisar, visar vi att 3,4 % av klimatavtrycket beror på ökad foderförbrukning orsakad av fyra utvalda sjukdomar i svenska grisbesättningar. Produktionshöjande åtgärder såsom exempelvis friska grisar och hög fodereffektivitet, övergång till förnybara bränslen inom såväl odling av foder som inom grisuppfödning är viktiga åtgärder för att minska klimatavtrycket givet att det inte påverkar andra miljöaspekter, djurhälsa eller djurvälfärd negativt. En central aspekt är fortsatt utveckling mot välbalanserade foderstater med val av foderråvaror med lågt klimatavtryck, användning av biprodukter och inhemska fodergrödor odlade på ett hållbart sätt.

Chemical pesticides are widely used in modern agriculture but their potential negative impacts are seldom considered in environmental assessments of food products. This study aims to assess and compare the potential freshwater ecotoxicity impacts due to pesticide use in the primary production of six food products: chicken fillet, minced pork, minced beef, milk, pea soup, and wheat bread. The assessment is based on a detailed and site-specific inventory of pesticide use in the primary production of the food products, all of which are produced in Sweden. Soybeans, used to produce the animal-based food products, are grown in Brazil. Pesticide emissions to air and surface water were calculated using PestLCI v. 2.0.5. Ecotoxicity impacts were assessed using USEtox v. 2.01, and expressed in relation to five functional units. The results show that the animal-based food products have considerably larger impact potentials than the plant-based food products. In relation to kg pea soup, impact potentials of bread, milk, minced beef, chicken fillet and minced pork are ca. 2, 3, 50, 140 and 170 times larger, respectively. All mass-based functional units yield the same ranking. Notably, chicken fillet and minced pork have larger impacts than minced beef and milk, regardless of functional unit, due to extensive use of pesticides, some with high toxicity, in soybean production. This result stands in sharp contrast to typical carbon footprint and land use results which attribute larger impacts to beef than to chicken and pork. Measures for reducing impacts are discussed. In particular, we show that by substituting soybeans with locally sourced feed crops, the impact potentials of minced pork and chicken fillet are reduced by ca. 70 and 90%, respectively. Brazilian soybean production is heavily reliant on pesticides. We propose that weak legislation, in combination with tropical climate and agronomic practices, explains this situation.

Purpose: The purpose of the European SENSE project was to define an integral system to assess and communicate the environmental impacts of food products and to develop a web-based tool for Small and Medium size Enterprises (SMEs). The tool has been tested in salmon, beef-and-dairy, and fruit juice production sectors. Methods: The SENSE project has evaluated several existing methodologies for environmental impact assessment over the life cycle including also social aspects, in order to deliver a new integral system for the environmental and social assessment of agricultural and aquaculture food products. Results and discussion: The system includes a standardization of a data gathering system, a selection of relevant key environmental performance indicators for food supply chains and a common methodology to perform simplified life cycle impact assessment. The results are based on collected information on the use of resources and emissions generated along the supply chain of food or drink products. The main result is a web-based software tool that is based on a summation of the partial impacts of the different steps in food supply chains. In this software, different actors in the supply chain can enter their own data and link them to the data of other companies. The results obtained in the tool could be used for at least six different approaches: (i) environmental impact assessment of the product, (ii) food chain hot spot identification, (iii) comparison of hypothetical or real improvement scenarios, (iv) assessment of the environmental impact development over the years, (v) benchmarking opportunity for the companies, and (vi) a business to business communication strategy. The scientific robustness of the tool has been tested comparing the obtained results with the same analysis with commercial software. Conclusions: The SENSE tool is a simplified tool designed for food and drink SMEs to assess their sustainability on their own. This cannot be fully compared to a complete LCA study. The testing with SMEs showed that they need additional support for filling in the questionnaires correctly and interpret the results. The simplified evaluation of environmental impacts based on a life cycle approach could lead to benefits to SMEs within the food industry. The future application and development of the tool will be focused on adapting the tool to the Product Environmental Footprint initiative requirements and self-assessment opportunities.

Although food production is a main driver of environmental pressure and resource use globally, food delivers critical nutrition to humans. In life cycle assessment (LCA) of foods, the dominant functional unit is mass, despite the ISO requirement that the LCA unit should reflect the actual function. Studies have used various dietary quality scores in environmental assessments of foods, but the consideration of the dietary context is largely missing. The main function, i.e., nutrient supply, is complex since the nutritional value of a food item depends on its dietary context. Moreover, overall nutritional value is a combination of multiple nutrients. The aim was to combine scientific knowledge from the fields of nutrition and LCA to generate a basis for further research. The long-term aim was to help develop methods to support sustainability-based planning and decision making by food chain stakeholders. The proposed functional unit expresses the nutrient content of individual foods in relation to the nutritional supply of the complete diet, to create a single score reflecting the nutrient quality in a given dietary context. The nutrient quality index developed was evaluated by analyzing how relationships in global warming potential (GWP) between single products differed when using as functional unit either the mass of the food product, a nutrient quality index not considering the dietary context (the Nutrient Rich Foods Index 9.3, NRF9.3) and the new dietary dependent nutrient quality index (NQI) proposed. Two dietary scenarios were explored, an average Swedish diet and a typical unhealthy diet. The products considered were: bread, apples, tomatoes, milk, hard cheese, spread and chicken fillets. The results, calculated using bread as the reference, indicated that in both dietary contexts apples, tomatoes, and hard cheese had lower NQIadjusted GWPs compared to when GWPs were calculated using mass as the functional unit. Milk's NQI-adjusted and mass-calculated GWPs differed little, while the chicken fillet GWPs were the same in the unhealthy diet and performed better in the average diet. The NRF9.3-adjusted GWPs differed from the NQI-adjusted ones for all analysed foods. The main conclusions were: 1) considering nutritional value in the LCA of foods improves our understanding of how the environmental impacts and nutritional functions of food are related; 2) the environmental performance of different products varies with dietary context; and 3) application of the NQI could help industry, authorities, and consumers improve products and diets.

RISE har på uppdrag av Jordbruksverket tagit fram rekommendationer kring klimat-avtryck för ett urval av foderråvaror. Klimatavtryck för foderråvaror och foderbland-ningar är insatsvaror som står för en betydande andel av det sammanlagda klimat-avtrycket i animalieproduktionen. Siffrorna är viktiga indata vid beräkning av en hel

gårds klimatavtryck som görs i rådgivningen "Klimatkollen" med hjälp av klimat-beräkningsdelen i beräkningsprogrammet Vera. RISE har genomfört litteraturstudie som kompletterats med beräkningar för några råvaror utifrån tillgänglig statistik.

Uppdraget är ett av sex deluppdrag finansierat med medel från EU:s landsbygdsprogram 2014

–2020 inom ramen för Jordbruksverkets projekt Minskad klimatpåverkan och förnybar energi (journalnummer 2015–776).

To source food ingredients produced by best practice, reducing food loss in the processing line and implementation of new technologies are some examples of changes in the management in the food and drink sector that may offer advantages from a sustainability perspective. There are several tools and methods for evaluating sustainability for a food processing technology but often specific methodological knowledge is essential and many companies may not be able to carry out such a study due to time constraints and lack of data. The aim of this paper is to provide a tool with the format of a qualitative sustainability checklist, based on existing Life Cycle Assessment theory. The checklist is devoted to the design and adaptation of processing in the food industry to clarify the potential hot spots in new process design and is focused on environmental sustainability, although other aspects were conferred as well to demonstrate its potential. To identify the potential of this kind of checklist, it was tested by four food companies. The participant feedback was in general positive. The companies highlighted the benefits of creating awareness of sustainability issues within the company and providing a good overview without data collection. From a scientific point of view, the approach can help to overcome several challenges in sustainability assessment in the agri-food sector, especially some modeling issues and spatio-temporal resolution. © 2018 The Authors