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Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Food Supply Chain
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Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Food Supply Chain

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Food".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (26 March 2023) | Viewed by 12503

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Jen-Yi Huang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Food Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA
Interests: life cycle assessment; sustainable food systems; green food technologies; food process engineering; bioresource valorization

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Food supply chain is a production system comprising growing, processing, distribution, consumption and disposal of food products from traditional open-field farms, ranches or controlled production in built environments. However, global food supply chains are under the constraints of a growing population, pressure on natural resources, challenges of climate change, and demands of nutritional security and food safety. To find and implement solutions to these challenges requires a convergence of fundamental and applied science in concert with holistic approaches to (1) satisfy human food need by improving agricultural productivity, (2) conserve natural resources and efficiently use on-farm resources, (3) enhance environmental quality, (4) ensure the supply of affordable, safe, nutritious, and accessible food.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an ISO-standardized analytical methodology for quantifying the environmental performance of a product throughout its entire life cycle. Since a sustainable food supply chain needs to be developed based on systems perspective, LCA is the most suitable and holistic approach to identify the hotspots of environmental impacts that could be subject to mitigation, and also compare different alternatives.

This Special Issue welcomes life cycle assessment research on rapidly advancing science and technology that offer opportunities to solve key problems of local, regional, national, and global importance in sustaining food supply chains. Topics of interest include, but not limited to:

  • Agricultural intensification, including crops, livestock and aquaculture
  • Regenerative agriculture
  • Optimal farm management practices
  • Production of high-value bio-based products and materials using agricultural feedstock
  • Advanced processing technologies to improve food quality and nutrients bioavailability, or mitigate foodborne diseases and food wastage
  • Novel protein production
  • Consumer behaviors that affect human health and overall quality of life

The research being submitted should assess new strategies or technical interventions that reduce the environmental footprint such as greenhouse gases, energy use, water and nutrient use, soil health, and ecosystem biodiversity.

Prof. Jen-Yi Huang
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sustainable agriculture
  • food production system
  • food value chain
  • environmental footprint
  • sustainable consumption
  • sustainability assessment
  • food-energy-water nexus
  • farm to fork

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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11 pages, 747 KiB  
Article
Life Cycle Assessment of Craft Beer Brewing at Different Scales on a Unit Operation Basis
by María Belén Salazar Tijerino, M. Fernanda San Martín-González, Juan Antonio Velasquez Domingo and Jen-Yi Huang
Sustainability 2023, 15(14), 11416; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su151411416 - 23 Jul 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2581
Abstract
Beer brewing is a complex process that comprises many fundamental unit operations. Over the last few years, craft brewing has become very popular, and the number of small-scale commercial brewers has drastically increased. However, due to the use of traditional beer-making methods, energy [...] Read more.
Beer brewing is a complex process that comprises many fundamental unit operations. Over the last few years, craft brewing has become very popular, and the number of small-scale commercial brewers has drastically increased. However, due to the use of traditional beer-making methods, energy utilization in craft breweries tends to be inefficient, resulting in poor sustainability. Therefore, there is a necessity for a holistic analysis on the energy profile of craft beer brewing to evaluate its environmental performance on a unit operation basis. In this study, a gate-to-gate life cycle assessment was conducted to analyze and compare the environmental profiles of craft beer brewing, including ale and lager, at commercial (microbrewery) and pilot scales. A process simulation model was developed to estimate the electricity and/or natural gas uses of each unit operation, including heating, mashing, boiling, whirlpool, cooling, fermentation, and maturation. The model accurately predicted the steam use for pilot-scale brewing and the electricity and gas bills of a microbrewery. The beers brewed at the microbrewery scale (21.5-barrel brewhouse) had 2–11-fold lower environmental impacts than those brewed at the pilot scale (1-barrel brewhouse), and lager beer generally produced 11–32% higher impacts than ale. The fermentation and maturation steps in brewing were the major contributors to global warming and terrestrial acidification, whereas the mashing step was predominantly responsible for marine eutrophication. This study provides craft brewers with a useful tool for identifying the hotspots of energy use in their processes and developing potential improvement strategies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Food Supply Chain)
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Review

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25 pages, 11537 KiB  
Review
Bibliometric Mapping of Research on Life Cycle Assessment of Olive Oil Supply Chain
by Ileana Blanco, Luigi De Bellis and Andrea Luvisi
Sustainability 2022, 14(7), 3747; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14073747 - 22 Mar 2022
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2654
Abstract
The olive oil supply chain and even its individual stages have been extensively investigated through life cycle assessment (LCA) in recent decades. Most practices of the olive oil supply chain have been associated with negative environmental effects, such as soil degradation, carbon dioxide [...] Read more.
The olive oil supply chain and even its individual stages have been extensively investigated through life cycle assessment (LCA) in recent decades. Most practices of the olive oil supply chain have been associated with negative environmental effects, such as soil degradation, carbon dioxide emissions, air and ground pollution, and depletion of groundwater. The current work aimed to perform a bibliometric analysis, through a science mapping approach, coupled with a review on the life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of the olive oil sector, with relevance to the environmental impacts of agricultural and industrial practices of this food sector. A total of 110 documents published in 2008–2021 were analyzed and discussed. More than 78% of documents were released from 2015. The main Scopus categories relating to the topic analyzed were environmental sciences (25%), energy (18%), and engineering (17%). The most productive countries were Italy, Spain, and Greece. The cluster analysis identified three main research topics related to the “agricultural phase”, “oil extraction”, and “waste management and by-product valorization”. Most of the recent publications focused on the application of LCA to evaluate the environmental impact of innovative agricultural practices, sustainable control of parasites and weeds, wastes, and by-products valorization within a circular economy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Food Supply Chain)
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25 pages, 560 KiB  
Review
Life Cycle Environmental Impacts and Health Effects of Protein-Rich Food as Meat Alternatives: A Review
by Maurizio Cellura, Maria Anna Cusenza, Sonia Longo, Le Quyen Luu and Thomas Skurk
Sustainability 2022, 14(2), 979; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14020979 - 16 Jan 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 6179
Abstract
The food sector is responsible for a considerable impact on the environment in most environmental contexts: the food supply chain causes greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, reduction in cultivable land, and other environmental impacts. Thus, a change in food supply is required to [...] Read more.
The food sector is responsible for a considerable impact on the environment in most environmental contexts: the food supply chain causes greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, reduction in cultivable land, and other environmental impacts. Thus, a change in food supply is required to reduce the environmental impacts caused by the food supply chain and to meet the increasing demand for sufficient and qualitative nutrition. Large herds of livestock are inappropriate to achieve these goals due to the relevant impact of meat supply chain on the environment, e.g., the land used to grow feed for animals is eight times more than that for human nutrition. The search for meat alternatives, especially for the intake of critical nutrients such as protein, is a consequent step. In the above context, this paper summarizes the health aspects of protein-rich food alternatives to meat and carries out a literature review on the life-cycle environmental impacts of this alternative food. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Food Supply Chain)
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