Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Analysis of Local Food Systems’ Environmental Impacts: Adapted Life-Cycle Approach and its Results on Two French Territories

2022; RELX Group (Netherlands); Linguagem: Inglês

10.2139/ssrn.4103051

1556-5068

Andrea Lulovicova, S. Bouissou,

Organic Food and Agriculture

Conceiving a more sustainable local food system has become a political concern to be considered by subnational governing bodies. This study analyses the environmental hotspots of all activities in a local food system (LFS) intending to improve the formulation and assessment of environmental government strategies. To achieve this goal, we propose to adopt a methodology based on a modified territorial life cycle analysis combined with an assessment of the territory’s ecological state and food resilience potential. The latter is tested on two distinctive local food systems: the municipality of Mouans-Sartoux in South-eastern France, characterised by high population density and underdeveloped agricultural production, and the department of Finistère (the northwest of France) with a low-density population and highly developed agriculture. The results suggest that in Mouans-Sartoux, the food products imported to its inhabitants from other national and international territories represent more than 90% of the local food system impact for all impact categories, mostly due to their production stage. Transportation and more specifically consumer travel to the supermarket is the second most influential environmental impact contributor. In Finistère, local agriculture is the main source of environmental degradation mostly related to bovine and porcine meat and milk production. Those are equally at the origin of the observed local pollution overshoots. Yet, the Finistère food production guarantees an important level of potential local food autonomy. This analysis of two diverse territories proves that the developed life-cycle-based methodology can be a strategical diagnostic and evaluation tool for local governments to analyse and prioritize more environmentally sustainable agri-food and land management policies.