Agribalyse program

Updated 03/14/2018

The AGRIBALYSE® program consisted in elaborating a database of Life Cycle Inventories (LCI) of the main French agricultural products at the farm gate, according to a homogeneous methodology shared between the agricultural partners.

NEWS : AGRIBALYSE v1.3 now AVAILABLE- January 2017

ADEME and all AGRIBALYSE partners are glad to provide you with the new version of the database  v1.3. This new version significantly enlarges the number of LCIs available with many more feed ingredients. It corrects few mistakes and connect with Ecoinvent v3.2 for background (non agricultural) LCIs. For users of OpenLCA or SimaPro it is recommended to directly download the database from the software webpage. For other users, they can still access the data directly from ADEME on ecospold format, once they signed the user licence (see download chapter). A simplified version of the result in Excel format is also available in the download session. Do not hesitate to contact us for any question regarding the data or the program at agribalyse@ademe.fr.


 

Presentation

 
The AGRIBALYSE® program consisted in elaborating a database of Life Cycle Inventories (LCI) of the main French agricultural products at the farm gate, according to a homogeneous methodology shared between the agricultural partners. It aim is to support eco-design and transparent environmental information.
 

The AGRIBALYSE database is intended for LCA practitionners and GHG emission assessments in the agricultural sector.  More broadly, it can be usefull to anybody interested in environmental data on the food system. The database is contributing to multi-sectorial ADEME databases such as Base IMPACT, and Base Carbone.  

The French Environmental Agency (ADEME) and its partners launched the AGRIBALYSE® program in 2009 in order to produce a homogeneous ​and transparent LCI database for agricultural products at the farm gate. This work is part of ADEME's global strategy to support environmental assessment of production chains and products.

The database contains over 200 LCIs for agricultural and livestock products,  in addition to all the data on agricultural inputs (machineries, fertilizers etc.)
 

Products assessed in AGRIBALYSE®

Annual crops	Durum wheat, soft wheat, sugar beet, carrot, rapeseed, faba bean, grain maize, barley, pea, potato, sunflower, triticale
Forage/grassland	Grass, alfalfa, silage maize
Fruits and vineyard	Peach, apple, cider apple, wine grape
Special crops	Rose, tomato, ornamental shrubs
Tropical special crops	Coffee, clementine, jasmine rice, mango, cacao, palm fruit
Plant products total: 25 product groups

 

Cattle	Cow milk, beef cow
Sheep	Sheep milk, lamb
Goats	Goat milk
Poultry	Egg, broiler, turkey, duck for roasting, fattening duck
Rabbits	Rabbit
Aquaculture	Trout, sea bass/sea bream
Pigs	Pork
Animal products total: 14 product groups

    

Method

The steps implemented to build the database are fully described in the report "AGRIBALYSE®: Assessment and lessons for the future" and the methodological choices in "AGRIBALYSE®: Methodology report".

The database calculations followed the usual LCA steps:
 

• description of production system and data collection;
• inventory of pollutant emissions and use of non-renewable resources (estimated using agro-environmental simulation models);
• impact assessment.

Each step required the partners’ expertise and some specific computer tools. It is important to note that LCI datasets were built to represent average French production conditions. These averages were obtained by aggregating LCIs representing different production systems, depending on the particularities of the specific product (conventional/organic, regional…). In some cases, no consistent average French product could be obtained; therefore it is crucial to take into account the representativeness and the validity of the LCI data.

The scope of the AGRIBALYSE®-LCI goes from cradle to field gate (for plant products) or farm gate (for animal products). Thus, processing, packaging and distribution steps are not included.

Concerning calculation and  modeling tools, AGRIBALYSE programs now relies on MEANS-InOut plateform, developed[VC1]  by INRA.

 

Organisation

In order to increase the number of data and improve the quality of the database a new phase of AGRIBALYSE was launched for the period 2014-2018.

AGRIBALYSE 2 was built as a program coordinating several projects running in parallel. The priorities are the following :

• Developing new data, especially for production systems with high environmental performances (eco-design)
• Methodological improvement
• Improvement of calculation tools

Figure of AGRIBALYSE 2 organisation
 


More information concerning ongoing projects are available here. Do not hesitate to contact us for more details, updates or to discuss potential cooperation.

 

AGRIBALYSE® Partners

The members of the steering comitee are :
 

• ADEME
• INRA
• MEDDE
• ACTA
• Agrosolutions / InVivo
• CIRAD

Supporting experts are : 

• UNEP : Llorenç Mila Canal
• Agroscope : Gérard Gaillard

Computer and calculation support :  

• Peter Koch Consulting

 

Supporting documentation is available for download here

AGRIBALYSE database v1.3 is available in LCA format directly through LCA softwares' platforms (OpenLCA, SimaPro).
A summary Excel file is available on ADEME webpage  for free download, with main LCI and LCIA indicators.
    
For further information or questions please contact: agribalyse@ademe.fr