Life Cycle Assessment Archives

2025 New Zealand

Life cycle-based environmental methods and indicators for sustainable consumption and production in New Zealand food systems

Authors: Majumdar, Shreyasi

An extensive LCA study was then undertaken for the orchard stage of the New Zealand avocado value chain, to guide the development of indicators for facilitating continuous environmental improvement. Data were collected from 49 orchards across the three main growing regions in New Zealand, plus 4 orchards that were recently established and thus classified as being in the non-productive and low production years of the avocado orchard life cycle. Individual orchard, regional and national level impact

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2025 Mexico

Challenging the Sustainability Narrative: Unveiling the hidden socioecological costs of plant-based alternatives.

Authors: Sharbin, Anton

This thesis investigates the hidden socio-ecological costs associated with plant-based alternatives, with a particular focus on avocados produced in Michoacán, Mexico. This study employs a convergent mixed-methods design using three distinct components: Lifecycle Analysis (LCA), Emergy Analysis (EmA) and Political Ecology (PE). The LCA revealed a carbon footprint of 5.96 kg CO₂e per 1kg avocado, placing avocado production on par with other high-impact animal food sources, such as poultry. The

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2025 Peru

Avocado production in different biomes throughout Peru: do differing cultivation practices translate into differences in environmental impacts?

Authors: Elorrieta-Mendoza, Alvaro,; Sanchez-Matos, Joan; Bentín, Jorge; Debrock, Sébastien; Mathot, Claire; Stelian, Louis; Soengas, Beatriz; Kahhat, Ramzy; Vázquez-Rowe, Ian

PURPOSE: Avocado production in Peru takes place in different biomes and under different agricultural systems (e.g., conventional, organic, or agroforestry). Therefore, it is important to understand differences in the environmental profile of avocado production within the diversity of these cultivation systems. Hence, the main objective of the study was to conduct a cradle-to-gate attributional Life Cycle Assessment of avocado production in Peru by small and medium-sized producers, under multiple scenarios to provide insights for enhancing environmental performance and including a sensitivity and uncertainty analysis. METHODS: Primary data were collected from 80 small and medium-sized producers (i.e., 355 ha) for the year 2023 to build the life cycle inventory, which was supported by the ecoinvent database. SimaPro was used to integrate inventory flows and assessment methods. The latter include a range of methods, such as IPCC 2021 to estimate GHG emissions, and AWARE to calculate water scarcity impacts, for which Peruvian-specific characterization factors (CFs) were incorporated. Biodiversity impacts were evaluated through the LUIS biodiversity footprint for land-use intensity and the product biodiversity footprint to identify broader biodiversity loss drivers. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The results demonstrate differences in environmental impacts between regions, based on type of production system, variety of avocado, altitude or ecological region, especially in terms of consumptive water use (i.e., scarcity) and biodiversity impacts. Water scarcity values ranged from 1.2 to 764 m³eq/kg depending on regionalized CFs. Biodiversity assessment methods suggest that avocado cultivation poses greater risks to the Amazon rainforest and the Andean Highlands compared to the coastal desert. Regarding GHG emissions, results ranged from 156 to 728 g CO₂eq/kg depending on the variety, within a middle range for fruits and vegetables as compared to the global literature. Agroforestry systems showed lower impacts compared to monoculture systems, particularly thanks to carbon sequestration. CONCLUSIONS: and recommendations. For both water scarcity and biodiversity, results have shown to be highly site-specific, and spatial resolution is needed for decision-making on a case-to-case basis. GW impacts also showed relevant variability, especially when comparing agroforestry systems in the Amazon basin, where GHG emissions were considerably low thanks to enhanced carbon capture, with other production systems across the country. In any case, GHG emissions were found to be in the lower range as compared to previous avocado studies in scientific literature. Optimizing fertilizer use and adopting efficient irrigation methods, while improving irrigation measurements, were identified as key strategies to reduce environmental burdens across all systems.

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2023 New Zealand

Towards use of life cycle–based indicators to support continuous improvement in the environmental performance of avocado orchards in New Zealand

Authors: Majumdar, Shreyasi; McLaren, Sarah J.

PURPOSE: A life cycle assessment (LCA) study was undertaken for the orchard stage of the NZ avocado value chain, to guide the development of indicators for facilitating continuous improvement in its environmental profile. METHODS: The functional unit (FU) was 1 kg Hass avocados produced in NZ, up to the orchard gate. The baseline model assessed avocados produced in fully productive orchards, using input data collected from 49 orchards across 281 ha in the three main avocado growing regions of New Zealand. In addition, the non-productive and low production years of avocado orchards were assessed using data from four newly established avocado operations spread across 489 ha. Climate change, eutrophication, water use, freshwater ecotoxicity and terrestrial ecotoxicity results were calculated for each orchard. Finally, national scores were calculated for each impact category from the weighted averages of the individual orchard results in the baseline sample of the three studied regions. RESULTS: There was significant variability between orchards in different input quantities, as well as impact scores. The impact assessment results showed that fuel use and fertiliser/soil conditioner production and use on orchard were consistently the main hotspots for all impact categories except water use, where impacts were generally dominated by indirect water use (irrespective of whether the orchards were irrigated or not). When considering the entire orchard lifespan, the commercially productive stage of the orchard life contributed the most to all impact category results. However, the impacts associated with 1 kg avocados, when allocated based on the total impacts across the orchard lifespan, were 13–26% higher than the baseline results which considered only the commercially productive years of the orchard life. CONCLUSION: The study identified the priority areas for focussed improvement efforts (in particular, fertiliser and fuel use for all impact categories, and agrichemical use for the ecotoxicity impacts). Second, the regional- and national-level impact scores obtained in this study can be used as benchmarks in indicator development to show growers their relative ranking in terms of environmental performance. When using the indicators and benchmarks in a monitoring scheme, consideration should be given to developing separate benchmarks (using area-based functional units) for young orchards. It will also be necessary to develop a better understanding of the reasons for the variability in inputs and impacts so that benchmarks can be tailored to account fairly and equitably for the variability between orchards and regions.

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2024 South Africa

Life Cycle Assessment of an Avocado: Grown in South Africa-Enjoyed in Europe

Authors: Blaauw, Sheldon A.; Broekman, André; Maina, James W.; Steyn, Wynand J. v. d. M.; Haddad, William A.

"Food production is known to have significant environmental impacts, with the main contributors residing in the farming and transportation life cycle phases. Of the various food products transported around the world, avocados have increasingly gained attention as a high-commodity superfood. Avocados require specific climatic and agricultural conditions for farming, with the most fertile land and conditions located outside Europe. Consequently, most avocados consumed in Europe are imported over vast geographical distances, with little information available to quantify the environmental impacts of this imported superfood. This paper aims to present the most detailed life cycle assessment results of an avocado cultivated, grown and harvested in the Limpopo Province of South Africa and exported to the European market for sale and consumption. A life cycle assessment was developed for the farming, harvesting, handling, packaging, ripening, transportation, and carbon sequestration potential of the avocado, and it was used to conduct a holistic life cycle assessment. Input data was obtained through an 18-month data collection campaign across the relevant stakeholders. A baseline 'business-as-usual' scenario is focused on throughout this study, and scope for optimisation is identified for each life cycle phase where applicable, accompanied by uncertainty analyses. Results show a total carbon input of 904.85 kg CO₂e/tonne. Mitigating this, 521.88 kg CO₂e/tonne is offset, resulting in a net carbon footprint of 382.97 kg CO₂e/tonne with uncertainty ranges of −23.22 to +58.69 kg CO₂e/tonne, normalised to 57.45 g CO₂e/avocado grown in South Africa and sold in Europe. The environmental impacts of the avocado industry under consideration are largely mitigated by the ""nature first"" philosophy of the farming and logistics enterprises, which have made significant investments in reducing emissions. Sensitivity analyses indicate that implementing large-scale renewable energy, using alternative packaging instead of cardboard, and selling avocados unripened could further enable the farming enterprise to achieve Net Zero objectives. These measures could reduce baseline emissions from 382.97 kg CO₂e/tonne to a theoretical −68.54 kg CO₂e/tonne, representing a 117.9% decrease. Although this study does not quantify climate change impacts, qualitative analyses suggest that climate change will have a net negative effect on the avocado industry in South Africa. These regions, typically located in micro-climates, are projected to become wetter and warmer, adversely affecting crop phenology, pest control, road conditions, management complexity, farmer livelihoods, and food security. The study recommends large-scale implementation of the optimisation strategies identified to achieve Net Zero objectives and the development of proactive climate change mitigation strategies to enhance the resilience of avocado supply chains to future stressors. These insights are crucial for policymakers, industry stakeholders, and consumers aiming to promote sustainability in the avocado market."

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2014 Mexico

Energy balance and greenhouse gas emissions in organic and conventional avocado orchards in Mexico

Authors: Astier, M.; Merlín-Uribe, Y.; Villamil-Echeverri, L.; Garciarreal, A.; Gavito, M.; Masera, O.

There is a worldwide growing awareness of the negative impacts of the increasing fossil fuel reliance and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture, in particular for intensive crop systems. We analyze the energy balances and greenhouse gas emissions from export-oriented avocado orchards in Mexico. Avocado is a very important export crop and one of the main drivers of land-use change in the country. We compared 12 avocado orchards under organic and conventional management during two production

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