Hayo van der Werf

French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE) | INRAE · Sol, Agro- et hydrosystème, Spatialisation (SAS)

Purpose Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land use and land-use change (LULUC) are major contributors to the climate change impact of agricultural products. The widely used method recommended by PAS 2050 when the previous land use is unknown has several limitations. The aim of this study was to develop a method to estimate GHG emissions from both...

In recent years, interest in studying the climate and environmental impact of organic food has grown. Here, we compared the environmental impacts of organic and conventional food using data from 100 life cycle assessment studies. Most studies focused on climate impacts, with fewer addressing biodiversity loss and ecotoxicity. Findings revealed no s...

Comprehensive but interpretable assessment of the environmental performance of diets involves choosing a set of appropriate indicators. Current knowledge and data gaps on the origin of dietary foodstuffs restrict use of indicators relying on site-specific information. This Personal View summarises commonly used indicators for assessing the environm...

La conservation et la restauration de la biodiversité impliquent généralement des interventions humaines. En comparaison, le ré-ensauvagement est une approche radicalement différente qui propose de s’appuyer sur les processus écologiques spontanés pour restaurer les écosystèmes. Le ré-ensauvagement, y compris celui des systèmes agricoles, a été exa...

The loss of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes is caused mainly by intensive agricultural production, especially livestock farms. However, certain farms that favor biodiversity attempt to decrease this loss, and the biodiversity hosted by these farms needs to be assessed. To this end, certain methods assess integrated variables of the overall...

The imperative of carbon neutrality requires a drastic, rapid, and sustained reduction in fossil energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The Russia-Ukraine war has led to a major energy crisis, whose end does not seem imminent. The sudden and major increase in energy prices resulting from this crisis has major impacts on many sectors of th...

Urgent action is needed to ensure humanity’s future under climate change. Agriculture faces major challenges as it is both influenced by and contributes to climate change. Conservation agriculture sequesters carbon (C) in the soil due to practices such as reduced tillage and planting of cover crops. This study assessed effects of an innovative cons...

Livestock farming systems are criticised for their environmental impacts, but they can also provide various ecosystem services to society, especially permanent grasslands. This study aimed to develop a method to assess impacts of permanent grasslands and their management on the supply of regulation and maintenance ecosystem services applicable at t...

In response to the sustainability issues that agriculture faces in advanced economies, agroecology has gained increasing relevance in scientific, political, and social debates. This has promoted discussion about transitions to agroecology, which represents a significant advancement. Accordingly, it has become a growing field of research. We reviewe...

Urgent action is needed to ensure humanity’s future under climate change. Agriculture faces major challenges as it is both influenced by and contributes to climate change. Conservation agriculture reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and sequesters carbon (C) in the soil due to practices such as reduced tillage and planting of cover crops. This s...

Consumers increasingly demand information about the environmental impacts of their food. The French government is in the process of introducing environmental labelling for all food products. A scientific council was set up, and its main conclusions are presented in this article, through six questions: What environmental issues should be considered?...

Agriculture’s primary function is the production of food, feed, fibre and fuel for the fast-growing world population. However, it also affects human health and ecosystem integrity. Policymakers make policies in order to avoid harmful impacts. How to assess such policies is a challenge. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework to help evalua...

L'Association Française de Zootechnie (AFZ) a organisé trois webinaires afin de faire l'état des lieux des connaissances relatives à l'évaluation environnementale des produits animaux, dans la perspective de la mise en place de l'affichage environnemental des produits alimentaires. Cet article résume les neuf interventions et les débats qui les ont...

CONTEXT Agricultural intensification is a major cause of biodiversity loss. Biodiversity conservation and restoration generally involve human intervention. In comparison, rewilding, a radically different approach to address the erosion of biodiversity, aims to increase the ability of ecological processes to act with little or no human intervention,...

There is an urgent need for agriculture in general, and for viticulture in particular, to reduce their impacts on the environment. Doing so requires an approach that supports transitioning to more environmentally friendly practices. Involving farmers and agricultural advisors is key to lifting technical, economic, and social barriers to this transi...

L’Association Française de Zootechnie (AFZ) a organisé trois webinaires afin de faire l’état des lieux des connaissances relatives à l’évaluation environnementale des produits animaux, dans la perspective de la mise en place de l’affichage environnemental des produits alimentaires. Cet article résume les neuf interventions et les débats qui les ont...

Trois spécialistes de l’agronomie, Yannick Biard, Arnaud Hélias et Hayo van der Werf, répondent aux inquiétudes exprimées par 137 parlementaires dans une tribune publiée dans « Le Monde » en décembre, et défendent l’analyse sur laquelle repose le futur affichage environnemental des produits alimentaires. Le Monde https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/arti...

En application de l’article 15 de la loi relative à la lutte contre le gaspillage alimentaire et à l’économie circulaire (loi AGEC de 2020), remplacé par l'article 2 de la loi Climat et résilience (2021), le Ministère de la Transition Écologique et l’Ademe ont lancé une Expérimentation en vue de concevoir et mettre en place un système d’affichage e...

Le Conseil Scientifique (CS) considère qu’il est possible de concevoir et de mettre en place un système d’affichage environnemental, qui réponde aux attentes exprimées par le législateur dans la loi AGEC (2020), puis dans l'article 2 de la loi Climat et résilience (2021). Dans cette perspective, les travaux menés par le CS, sur la base de la littér...

CONTEXT: Agricultural intensification is a major cause of biodiversity loss. Biodiversity conservation and restoration generally involve human intervention. In comparison, rewilding, a radically different approach to address the erosion of biodiversity, aims to increase the ability of ecological processes to act with little or no human intervention...

Environmental data on organic products are needed to assess their environmental performance. The purpose of the ACV Bio project reported here was to generate environmental data as life cycle assessment (LCA) data for a sample of French organic production systems including cropping systems (annual crops, intercrops, forages), grassland, wine grapes,...

Institut du Développement Durable et des Relations Internationales: Paris, France

CONTEXT According to the bifurcation hypothesis, a gap may be growing between “agroecological” organic farms, which rely mostly on ecosystem services, and “conventionalised” ones, which rely more on external inputs, related to contrasting evolutions in farm structure (e.g. size, specialisation) and supply chains. OBJECTIVE The objectives of this s...

Organic vegetable farming systems in France have diverse farm structures, farming practices and socio-economic contexts. From April-July 2019, Pépin et al. [1] surveyed 165 farms using an online form. The questions about farming practices or socio-economic context did not require quantitative responses to make them simple and easy to answer. From a...

There is a growing demand for moving towards sustainable agri-food systems which per nature covers a complex network of activities and domains; such systems will benefit from multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods. Although some reviews on MCDA in agri-food research have been published, none of them covered the whole value chain. In this a...

People are keener than ever to make ethical, environmentally friendly food purchases. But a spate of bad press about the environmental impact of organic produce may leave some people scratching their heads.

The environmental effects of agriculture and food are much discussed, with competing claims concerning the impacts of conventional and organic farming. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the method most widely used to assess environmental impacts of agricultural products. Current LCA methodology and studies tend to favour high-input intensive agricultu...

PEOPLE are keener than ever to make ethical, environmentally friendly food purchases. But a spate of bad press about the environmental impact of organic produce may leave some people scratching their heads. The debate about this is contentious. Critics say organic farming is less efficient than conventional farming, and so uses more land, leading t...

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is the method most widely used to assess environmental impacts ofagricultural products. Current LCA methodology and studies tend to favour high-input intensiveagricultural systems and misrepresent less intensive agroecological systems such as organic agriculture.This is due partly to LCA’s approach, which focuses on prod...

L'analyse du cycle de vie (ACV) est la méthode la plus utilisée pour évaluer les impacts environnementauxdes produits agricoles. La méthodologie et les études actuelles d'ACV ont tendance à favoriser lessystèmes agricoles intensifs utilisant beaucoup d’intrants et à donner une image inexacte des systèmesagroécologiques moins intensifs tels que l'ag...

Résumé L’amélioration continue de la nutrition de la population constitue un enjeu majeur de santé publique. Pour s’inscrire dans la perspective du développement durable, cette démarche doit, en plus de la dimension nutritionnelle, également considérer les dimensions environnementale et économique, et aussi l’acceptabilité des changements alimentai...

This data article contains annotation data characterizing MultiCriteria Assessment (MCA) Methods proposed in the agri-food sector by researchers from INRA, Europe's largest agricultural research institute (INRA, http://institut.inra.fr/en). MCA can be used to assess and compare agricultural and food systems, andsupport multi-actor decision making a...

Purpose Numerous policy instruments are applied to agricultural production in the European Union (EU27). Implementing them may significantly influence environmental impacts of agricultural production. A consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) approach was used to investigate potential environmental impacts of two EU27 policy instruments: dairy q...

L'évaluation multicritère des systèmes agricoles : une révolution des méthodes

Contexte : La viticulture est très exigeante en intrants. La viticulture biologique est souvent considérée comme un système durable, mais elle a des impacts environnementaux. L'analyse du cycle de vie (ACV) permet de discriminer les itinéraires viticoles. Objectif : Notre article présente et discute l'intérêt de l'ACV pour évaluer, comparer et amél...

To reduce the negative impacts of agricultural systems, the agro-ecological transition first calls for theuse of greater cultivated biodiversity. Such diversification can be implemented at the field scale, mixingdifferent species, or different varieties of the same species. We discuss the advantages of this intra-fielddiversification by developing...

Transitioning towards more environmentally friendly agriculture starts with change of practices at plot level, while strategic decisions are taken at farm level. Implementing eco-design in agriculture requires therefore reasoning at both plot and farm levels. Collecting detailed data for each farm plot is, however, a daunting and time-consuming tas...

Purpose Despite the farm being considered by many as the most suitable level of decision-making and strategic management in agriculture, there is an increasing interest in evaluating agricultural management strategies at the regional level. Recent initiatives attempted to aggregate and generalise farm-level lifecycle inventory (LCI) data and lifecy...

In life cycle assessment (LCA), simple models are currently used to estimate cropping system nitrogen (N) emissions on farms. At large spatial scales (e.g., countries), these models are valid. At a smaller spatial scale (e.g., territories), these models may be less accurate, since they completely or partially ignore local conditions such as managem...

Greater use of life cycle assessment (LCA) by agents of change will be needed to inform environmental improvements in agriculture, but the complexity of LCA can be a barrier. More accessible LCA tools customised for agriculture are emerging, but their effectiveness has not been considered. The aim of the work was to understand how tool features inf...

Since the 1st of April 2015, European dairy quotas, one of the iconic instruments of the Common Agricultural Policy, have been removed. With this removal, the European Commission expects to develop a more competitive and market-oriented dairy sector in light of increasing world food demand. In countries such as France, where quotas were administrat...

Several attempts have been made to harmonize guidelines for environmental footprints of food and beverages. For example, the food Sustainable Consumption and Production Roundtable, the Leap partnership, and the Environmental Footprint project, in particular within the Cattle Model Working Group. Despite all these activities, there are still many is...

AGRIBALYSE is a French program dedicated to producing Life cycle inventories（LCI）of agricultural products. The program focused on developing a consensual LCA methodology and providing a homogenous LCI database of French agricultural products, to support environmental labelling policies and to help the agricultural sector to improve its practices. A...

Rapport de l’Expertise scientifique collective réalisée par l’INRA à la demande des ministères en charge de l'Ecologie et de l'Agriculture, et de l'Ademe

The complexity of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method requires many subjective choices throughout the procedure, which make decision making difficult and LCA results insecure. Our approach consists in combining life cycle thinking and sensitivity analysis to provide information to the actor of a foreground system within a product's life cycle. F...

A high incidence of cardiovascular disease is observed worldwide, and dietary habits are one of the risk factors for these diseases. Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids in the diet help to prevent cardiovascular disease. We used life cycle assessment to analyse the potential of two strategies to improve the nutritional and environmental characteris...

Environmental impacts of eight diets. (XLSX)

Life cycle impact assessment results for food items. (XLSX)

Compilation of impact assessment characterization factors. (XLSX)

Detailed composition of Average, Healthy and Vegetarian diets. (XLSX)

Modifications in the composition of animal rations (as percentage-point decrease or increase in mass) and animal-production changes per animal type for life cycle inventories of production systems providing higher omega-3 levels, compared to life cycle inventories of AGRIBALYSE 1.1 production systems. ADG: Average Daily weight Gain. (XLSX)

Eicosapentaenoic Acid (EPA) and Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA) values for standard and BBC animal foods provided by the Bleu-Blanc-Coeur association. (XLSX)

This thesis is written in French. Here follows the translation of the first two paragraphs of the introduction. I like the philosopher Alain, he said: We can prove everything we want, the real difficulty is to know what we want to prove (Chartier, 1920). This HDR memory will first present my motivations, what inspired me, what I wanted to prove du...

The number of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies on foods and diets steadily increases. However, due to lack of data on food products as well as time and resource constraints, many of these studies ignore part of the system (e.g. cooking and waste in the household), which may lead to underestimating impacts greatly. This LCA study compared diets u...

Par la qualité de ses protéines et lipides, et sa densité en vitamines et minéraux, l’œuf est un aliment de choix. Mais la consommation moyenne d’œuf en France est faible : entre 20 et 30 g/jour/personne, soit 3 à 4 œufs par semaine. Malgré sa forte densité nutritionnelle, l’œuf ne contribue donc que modestement aux apports nutritionnels observés (...

Il est essentiel de trouver un équilibre entre la production d’aliments riches en nutriments et la préservation de l’environnement. Dans une perspective d’amélioration de la durabilité de notre système alimentaire, via potentiellement une plus grande place accordée à l’oeuf et aux ovoproduits, cette étude bibliographique vise à faire le point sur l...

Concepts, méthodes et outils pour l’évaluation multicritère de la durabilité des systèmes agricoles

AGRIBALYSE® is a LCI database of the main French agricultural products from cradle to farm gate, using a homogeneous and transparent methodology. The work is coordinated by the French Environmental Agency (ADEME), and involves researchers, technical institutes, cooperatives and the Ministry of Ecology. By providing such data, the partners wish to f...

One of the major challenges in environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of crop production is the non-linearity between nitrogen (N) fertiliser inputs and on-site N emissions resulting from complex biogeochemical processes. A few studies have addressed this non-linearity by combining process-based N simulation models with LCA, but none accounted f...

Purpose: Although, according to the ISO 14044 standard, economic allocation should be the solution of last resort, it is frequently used in LCA studies of agri-food systems because of the inadequacy of solutions preferred by ISO. We propose a new way of allocating impacts to plant co-products according to the underlying physical relationships betwe...

The aim of this article is to develop a methodological approach allowing to assess the influence of parameters of one or more elementary processes in the foreground system, on the outcomes of a life cycle assessment (LCA) study. From this perspective, the method must be able to: (1) include foreground process modeling in order to avoid the assumpti...

The objective of this paper is to contribute to the debate on environmental labelling by exploring the potential of

AGRIBALYSE is a French research program dedicated to producing Life cycle inventories (LCI) of agricultural products, based on a strong partnership of 14 research and technical institutes. It provides a homogenous and consensual LCI database to support environmental labelling policies and to help the agricultural sector to improve its practices. Th...

Numéro Hors-Série ; Session : Empreinte environnementale de la viande et des produits carnésPartenaires des JSMTV 2014 :Polytech Clermont-Ferrand, France.VetAgro Sup, Institut d'Enseignement Supérieur et de Recherche en Alimentation, Santé Animale, Sciences Agronomiques et de l'Environnement, France.ADIV, Association pour le Développement de l'Inst...

This paper introduces the Special Volume (SV) dedicated to the 2012 Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Food Conference. During recent years, these conferences have seen a rapid increase in the number of participants, reflecting the development of an interdisciplinary research and development community at the intersection between the agronomic, food/nutrit...

Cereal-legume intercrops (ICs) are a promising way to combine high productivity and ecological benefits in temperate agroecosystems. This study aims to apply a life cycle assessment (LCA) to ICs by testing several methods of co-product handling to ascertain the environmental impacts of the co-products. Several classic methods of allocation and syst...