Development of an exergy-based life cycle assessment tool to evaluate resource use of dairy farms in Flanders

Agriculture is facing huge challenges to maintain a sustainable production in the future. To deal with environmental challenges such as pollution and resource depletion, the potential environmental impact of agricultural prod-ucts should be evaluated throughout the life cycle of these products. To that respect, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is currently the most commonly used method. Environmental impact can be related to the use of (non-)renewable resources and to the emission of pollutants. Very often, these evaluations are restricted to only one environmental impact, i.e. global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions and expressed as Carbon Footprint. The dan-ger is that such narrow approach can pose risks for pollution swapping be-tween emission- and resource-related impacts and within emission-related impacts. If we want to address sustainability in a world of increasing scarci-ty, an integrated analysis of environmental impacts related to both emissons and resource use along agricultural supply chains is required. Exergy analy-sis is a method to account for the consumption of resources, both material and energy inputs, on one common scale. An exergy-based LCA tool is being developed for application in an agricultural context. The dairy life cycle until farm gate is chosen to build the tool, as it includes both animal and plant production. A case study on two Flemish dairy farms is performed. Data have been collected and exergy calculations are in progress.