2023/11/11 by Lorinquer, Elise, Béguin, Emmanuel, Raison, Christelle +11
#Carbon storage #Dairy farms #Economy #Environment #Environmental assessment methodology #Environnement #Gaz à effet de serre #Greenhouse gas #Méthode d'évaluation environnementale #Stockage de carbone #Systèmes laitiers #Économie
paper · doi:10.17180/r25j-3x95
Since a few years, economical, political and societal context has led agriculture to think of new production systems. One of the main stakes is to be able to combine production and new environmental demand. In order to evaluate positive and negative impacts of livestock on environment, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method has been developed and applied, in a first time to 400 specialized dairy farms of the Réseau d’Elevage database. At the end of this treatment, six environmental impacts have been calculated. In average, the raw carbon footprint averages 1252 kg CO2 eq./1000 l of milk and the net carbon footprint reaches 1016 kg CO2 eq./1000 l after taking into account carbon storage. Eutrophication is at 5,9kg PO4 eq./1000 l, acidification is around 11kg SO2 eq/1000 l, fossil energy consumption is 2860 MJ/1000 l. Some contributions are considered as positive to the environment such as biodiversity have been evaluated. All these results vary regarding type of farming systems that can exist in France. Grassland-based self-sufficient systems can be seen as the best regarding the different impacts, but a high variability can be observed within this system. In a second time, a statistic treatment has been conducted on 196 dairy farms in order to push further analysis between technical, economical and environmental results. From this analysis, six classes of farm have been obtained.