Soil quality Assessment in Agriculture For life cycle assessment-based Eco-design

Project Information

SAAFE

Grant agreement ID: 843845

DOI

10.3030/843845

Project closed

EC signature date 22 July 2019

Start date 23 April 2022

End date 22 April 2025

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 281 827,20

EU contribution

€ 281 827,20

Coordinated by

CENTRE DE COOPERATION INTERNATIONALE EN RECHERCHE AGRONOMIQUE POUR LEDEVELOPPEMENT - C.I.R.A.D. EPIC
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SAAFE (Soil quality Assessment in Agriculture For life cycle assessment-based Eco-design)

Reporting period: 2024-04-23 to 2025-04-22

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Evidence indicates that human activities are surpassing Earth's safe limits, necessitating urgent reductions in our environmental impact. Agriculture, pivotal in both production and natural resource protection, contributes significantly to environmental impacts, including global greenhouse gas emissions, notably through soil carbon losses. Yet, studies underscore both agriculture's potential to store substantial carbon in soils and more generally agriculture's overall impacts on soil, which is critical for providing essential ecosystem services. However, soils are under threat, with land degradation affecting a significant portion of global land area and incurring substantial economic costs, particularly in Europe.

To address these challenges, there is a pressing need to adopt more sustainable land management practices that safeguard soil quality. Soil quality is integral to achieving many Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Life cycle assessment (LCA) stands as the globally recognised method for evaluating environmental impacts across production chains. Despite its adoption as a standard for reporting environmental data and certifications, LCA application to agricultural products faces significant limitations, especially regarding its ability to assess the impact of land use on soil quality comprehensively.

"Soil quality" refers to a soil's fitness to function within its context, a concept that defies direct measurement and relies on proxy indicators. Existing frameworks, such as those developed by the JRC European Platform on LCA, have made strides in assessing soil organic carbon but fall short in evaluating broader soil functions. Current methods struggle to balance the need for comprehensive soil quality assessment with practical applicability, indicating a critical gap in the understanding and implementation of soil-related metrics in LCA.

The Soil quality Assessment in Agriculture For life cycle assessment-based Eco-design (SAAFE) EU project aims to tackle these challenges through an interdisciplinary approach, developing a dedicated framework and complementary models to assess soil quality's key functions comprehensively. By enhancing model implementation and fostering interdisciplinary research, SAAFE seeks to ensure its framework's adoption by LCA end-users and policymakers, thus advancing sustainable development aligned with SDG objectives.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The research work started with an extensive literature review on existing models and data to develop the needed models to cover soil quality, using the holistic approach proposed by Kibblewhite et al. (2008) as a conceptual basis. This integrative approach stresses 4 major soil functions that are characterised each as “an aggregate of biological processes provided by interacting soil organisms under the influence of the abiotic soil environment”. Those functions are 1) carbon transformation; 2) nutrient cycling; 3) structure maintenance; and 4) biological population regulation. The SAAFE project aims at modelling the changes in these functions, hence in agroecosystem functioning as influenced by anthropogenic drivers (i.e. the land uses and the forestry and agricultural interventions). Hence, not only the models need to quantify the functions but they also need to be sensitive to land uses and management interventions. The conclusions of the review were as follows:
• Carbon transformation and nutrient cycling are the most covered functions in terms of research, field measurements and model developments;
• Existing knowledge and material related to the modelling of the impact of land uses on soil structure maintenance do not account for the biological processes involved beyond the effect of soil organic matter;
• Biological population regulation may refer to various mechanisms and indicators but remains a fuzzy concept. There is no consensus yet on the best ways to assess this function and datasets remain scarce and heterogeneous.
Based on those first conclusions, the first model development had to be focused on carbon transformation and nutrient cycling. A brand-new approach was needed to better grasp the actual links between soil biology and structure maintenance. Finally, the development of a model on biological population regulation was postponed beyond the SAAFE timeframe.

There exist many indicators that could have been selected and tested. At this stage, five were chosen but more could be added beyond the end of the project depending on updated data availability and model performances. In other words, the SAAFE framework should be consistent but individual models may evolve beyond the SAAFE timeframe. As detailed in the initial project proposal, we built on previous works to choose some of the indicators and completed the list based on further research during the outgoing phase. The preliminary choice of the various indicators was justified by both their scientific relevance according to the literature review and the availability of data at a large scale, which is paramount for a final application within LCA. The final decision on chosen indicators will furthermore reflect on the performances of the developed models, in particular their sensitivity to land use and management drivers.
Based on the state of art of knowledge and models, during the outgoing phase, three complementary approaches to define the SAAFE indicators and modelling work is still on-going to provide the final indicators.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Implementing the SAAFE integrative approach of soil quality has not been done in LCA yet. Nowadays, LCA is widely used across sectors (agrifood, building, energy...). It has become a critical tool to eco-design but also to environmental fooprinting. Quantified sound information on environmental impacts of our production systems can help all stakeholders building a more global sustainable world all together: from producers who can improve their systems avoiding problem shifting up to consumers who can transparently decide on making good choices for the planet, through to policy makers who can help providing consistent incentives across supply cvhains and sectors. The more comprehensive LCA is, from an ecosystem services point of view, the more useful towards sustainability.

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