Land use and land use change in agricultural LCAs and carbon footprints e the case for regionally specific LUC versus other methods Stefan Hörtenhuber a, b, * , Gerhard Piringer b , Werner Zollitsch b , Thomas Lindenthal a, c , Wilfried Winiwarter d, e a Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) Austria, Doblhoffgasse 7/10, A-1010 Vienna, Austria b BOKU e University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Department of Sustainable Agricultural Systems, Division of Livestock Sciences, Gregor Mendel Straße 33, A-1180 Vienna, Austria c BOKU e University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Centre for Global Change and Sustainability, Borkowskigasse 4, A-1190 Vienna, Austria d University of Graz, Institute of Systems Sciences, Innovation and Sustainability Research, Merangasse 18/l, A-8010 Graz, Austria e International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria article info Article history: Received 31 March 2013 Received in revised form 30 November 2013 Accepted 10 December 2013 Available online xxx Keywords: Land use Land use change Agriculture Greenhouse gas emissions GHG Feedstuffs abstract The supply chain of a product is essential for understanding its environmental impacts. As parts of agricultural product supply chains, land use (LU) and land use change (LUC) are considered to be major contributors to global CO 2 emissions. Nevertheless, LU and LUC (LULUC) are rarely included in GHG estimations for food and feedstuffs. Here we propose a method which can be used to derive emissions from LU and LUC on a regional level. Emissions are distributed over an accounting period chosen to match the physically occurring carbon fluxes. As fluxes from soil organic carbon persist for years or even for decades after a LUC episode, depending on the climatic conditions of the region, we apply 10 and 20 years as suitable accounting periods for tropical and temperate climate zones, respectively. We compare the proposed method with two other methods proposed in the literature. Using two types of feedstuffs (Brazilian soybean-meal and Austrian barley) as examples, we find that the other two methods produce mostly lower emission estimates in the case of Brazilian soybeans, and higher estimates for Austrian barley. We conclude that these differences are caused mainly by different accounting periods and by a (non)consideration of regional specificities. While analysing life cycles necessarily entails a well sup- ported e but still arbitrary e setting of such system boundaries, we argue that the methodology pre- sented here better reflects actually occurring carbon fluxes that we understand to be the foundation of any environmental product assessment. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Agriculture, and especially animal husbandry, cause consider- able emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). In addition to the emissions from the livestock itself, its supply chain, specifically the production of feed, needs to be considered. This was found to contribute considerably to overall GHGs from animal husbandry, both from direct cultivation-related emissions (from soil or fuels) and from indirect emissions (e.g. Leip et al., 2010; Weiss and Leip, 2012). The term “indirect” here refers to emissions that do not occur at the location or time of feedstuff cultivation; they include for example those caused by land use change (Hörtenhuber et al., 2011), or from fertilizer manufacturing. This impact of feed may strongly differ by region (Plassmann et al., 2010; Van Middelaar et al., 2013). As opposed to previous findings (e.g. Dalgaard et al., 2008), information on characteristics of supply chains and on specified regions of origin of raw materials is increasingly available, for example on a national scale (due to traceability or certified agricultural goods traded; see e.g. UNIDO, 2010). The information can be used to estimate product-specific GHG emissions. This permits the development of a product- and region-specific approach for emissions from the supply chains of most livestock production systems; in this work, we specifically address GHGs related to land-use and land-use-change (LULUC) originating from the production of feedstuffs. Land use change (LUC) is also termed “land conversion” or “land transformation” in life cycle assessments (LCAs). It describes emissions caused by a change from a previous use to a current use, * Corresponding author. Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) Austria, Doblhoffgasse 7/10, A-1010 Vienna, Austria. Tel.: þ43 (0)1 9076313; fax: þ43 (0)1 9076313 20. E-mail addresses: stefan.hoertenhuber@boku.ac.at, stefan.hoertenhuber@fibl. org (S. Hörtenhuber). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro 0959-6526/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.12.027 Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2013) 1e9 Please cite this article in press as: Hörtenhuber, S., et al., Land use and land use change in agricultural LCAs and carbon footprints e the case for regionally specific LUC versus other methods, Journal of Cleaner Production (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.12.027