Local or imported? Environmental and social sustainability evaluation of tomatoes for informed decision-making

Main Presenter:    Mara Petruzzelli 

Co-Authors:   Mélanie Douziech                                               

Background and relevance: To ensure a transition to greater sustainability, food systems must consider socio-cultural aspects as well as environmental impacts. This need has become particularly crucial in the context of the expansion of cross-country trade, which adds complexity to the choice of sustainable food sourcing. Despite that, the question of whether local foods are more sustainable than imported ones is still not sufficiently addressed in literature.
Objective and research questions: Addressing limitations of previous works, the paper adopts a case study on tomatoes in Switzerland to investigate the potential of combining Social-Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for measuring the impacts of local versus imported foods and contributing to evidence-based policy. Three research questions (RQs) are examined:
RQ1. What are the key environmental and social impacts of local and imported tomatoes?
RQ2. How do the results of this study compare to available literature?
RQ3. How can the combination of S-LCA and LCA inform decision-making on local and imported foods?
Approach and methods: The study applies a cradle-to-market LCA and S-LCA following the ISO guidance. The analysis refers to 1kg of tomato to guarantee comparability of results and uses PSILCA v4 and ecoinvent 3.11 background databases as data sources. The LCA impact assessment is performed using SALCA v2 methodology for 22 impact categories, while for S-LCA the reference scale approach is chosen and social risks are analyzed for 18 impact subcategories.
Expected results: Results will provide quantitative insights connecting social and environmental consequences of importing food products compared to producing them domestically. Discrepancies or similarities in the occurrence of impacts of local and imported products across the steps of the supply chain will be documented in an easily understandable format. Overall, the illustration of synergies and trade-offs between social and environmental dimensions will provide science-based evidence on the circumstances under which imports should be encouraged.
Novelty and significance of the work: The study is characterized by several novelties. First, none of the existing LCA of tomatoes applied a combined LCA and S-LCA, and none of those have advanced a comparison between imports and local products. Second, the work is the first one using v4 of PSILCA for S-LCA, recognized as the most consistent one across countries and products. Finally, for answering RQ2, we developed the first systematic review of previous S-LCA analysis on tomato, providing novel ground for methodological comparison.

Keywords: LCA, PSILCA, S-LCA, import, tomato

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