Sustaining Agri-Food Systems with Advanced Life Cycle Assessment

Dear Colleagues,

The production of food for humans and animals comes at a great cost to the environment; hence, life cycle assessments are ever-present in agri-food systems to estimate the input versus output resource balance and/or to validate environmental responsibility claims among other uses. It is common knowledge that despite the international standards for performing life cycle assessments outlined in ISO 14040 and 14044, the interpretation of the inputs, outputs, and any environmental impact of a product system can vary among investigators. Hence, continuous review and improvement of the current methods will benefit agri-food systems. In the literature, there is a lot of debate on the role of life cycle systems and their effect on agri-food systems. Different approaches have been used to carry out inventory analyses, impact assessments, and the determination of how the various phases of an LCA are linked. Also, the cost categories and limitations of each LCA give rise to tremendous data modeling opportunities that can help provide improved LCA tools. This Special Issue aims to highlight reports of the latest ‘field to fork’ LCA approaches that will help sustain agri-food systems in line with the United Nations sustainable development goal 12. This Special Issue is consistent with the support for sustainable food supply and agriculture in this journal.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome, and research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• General life cycle assessments;
• Energy resource efficiencies;
• New or improved LCA tools;
• Life cycle cost analyses;
• New agri-food system LCA modeling approaches;
• Environmental impact audits with LCA;
• LCA of food supply chains;
• LCA linked to UN sustainable development goals;
• Production, supply chain, or consumption LCAs;
• Spotlight on a specific agri-food facility.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Ogueri Nwaiwu
Guest Editor

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• life cycle assessment
• energy efficiency
• cost analysis
• modelling
• environmental impact