Goals, Strengths and Limitations Governing the Use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in Food and Agriculture

CAST Commentaries - QTA2022-1 - January 2022
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Q&A from the January 25, 2022 Webinar

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method to identify all the inputs and outputs necessary to make a product and quantify the associated environmental and socioeconomic impacts. In its simplest form, the LCA method describes the inputs (e.g. energy, materials, and resources) to a process and all the resulting outputs including the emissions and losses to the environment. LCA provides a modeling framework to link all processes together such that the sum of the inputs and outputs of all involved processes are included. LCA provides a system perspective that considers a product’s life cycle and quantifies the relevant impacts caused by it.

January 25, 2022 Presentation Slides

Publication Impact Report — June 2023 (18-month report)

Task Force Chair

Marty Matlock

Task Force Authors

Stephen Pfister

Brad Ridoutt

Kurt Rosentrater

Greg Thoma

Yuan Yao

Task Force Reviewers

Tom Battagiese

Ermias Kebreab

Michael Wang

Task Force Board Liaisons

Juan Tricario

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