CONFERENCE REPORT LCA Food 2012—towards sustainable food systems Hayo M. G. van der Werf & Michael S. Corson & Aurélie Wilfart Received: 12 February 2013 / Accepted: 11 March 2013 / Published online: 28 March 2013 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 1 Introduction Among its many wonders, France is famous for its food. The eighth edition of the “International Conference on Life Cycle Assessment in the Agri-Food Sector” was held there for the first time in 2012. The LCA Food conferences are the world’ s premier scientific forum on LCA in the agri-food sector. The previous conferences took place in Belgium (1996, 1998), Sweden (2001, 2007), Denmark (2003), Switzerland (2008) and Italy (2010). LCA Food 2012 took place in Saint Malo (western France) from 1–4 October. It was organised by INRA, the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, with the support of ADEME, the French Environment and Energy Management Agency. It was supported by ten sponsors (see conference website) and our indefatigable INRA colleagues of the organising committee. The 23-person international scientific committee reviewed 362 abstracts and 110 six-page papers. 2 Objectives The production, transformation, distribution and consump- tion of food and drink contribute strongly to human pros- perity and health. However, the food and agriculture sector also causes major environmental impacts. These impacts need to be reduced urgently, and therefore, a shift towards sustainable food systems is essential. Over the last two decades, LCA in the agri-food sector has developed rapidly as a major tool to guide this evolution. The goal of the LCA Food conferences is to serve as a global forum in which to share recent developments in LCA methodology, databases and tools, as well as applications of LCA to food and non-food production systems and con- sumption patterns. In the 2012 call for papers, particular focus was placed on the following topics: Methods & Impact assessment: biodiversity, water and land use; soil quality; toxicity; spatial differentiation & System definition, allocation, functional unit, attribu- tional and consequential LCA & Quantification and reduction of uncertainty & Life cycle sustainability assessment & Ecodesign of agricultural and food systems Applications & Annual and perennial crops, terrestrial and aquatic animal production & Eco-labelling, communication, consumer behaviour & Food consumption patterns and diets & Trade-offs between food quality and impacts & Assessing farming systems at the territory/regional scale 3 Attendance In spite of the global recession, the number of participants showed continued growth relative to previous editions: 436 participants (up from 273 in 2010; Notarnicola 2011) from 36 countries (up from 30 in 2010; Figs. 1 and 2). Non- OECD countries represented 28 % of countries but only 5 % of participants. Eighty-six percent of the participants came from Europe, 6 % from North America, and 2 % each from Asia, Oceania, Africa and South America. It should be noted, however, that a significant proportion of those H. M. G. van der Werf (*) : M. S. Corson : A. Wilfart INRA, Agrocampus Ouest, UMR1069 SAS, 35000 Rennes cedex, France e-mail: Hayo.vanderWerf@rennes.inra.fr Int J Life Cycle Assess (2013) 18:1180–1183 DOI 10.1007/s11367-013-0571-7