Fig 1.
Flow diagram for production of the feed ingredients included in the ECOALIM dataset, with main processes for crop-input production, crop production and feed-ingredient production.
System perimeters include all sub-processes.
Table 1.
Main inputs used and dry matter yield for French crops used as ingredients in animal feed.
Table 2.
Data references for average life cycle inventories for the main French crops.
Table 3.
Main inputs used and dry matter yield for European and non-European crops serving as feed ingredients for animal feed (BR: Brazil, US: United States of America, UK: United Kingdom, MY: Malaysia, PK: Pakistan, UA: Ukraine).
Fig 2.
Overview of the ECOALIM impact dataset in Microsoft® Excel, freely available at http://www6.inra.fr/ecoalim_eng/ and from the Dryad Digital Repository: http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.14km1.
Table 4.
Number of life cycle inventories available in the ECOALIM dataset according to the type of feed ingredient and perimeter.
Fig 3.
Factorial maps of the Multiple Correspondence Analysis with plotting of the active variable levels contributing more than 10% of the first 4 dimensions (A and C) and plotting of the feed-ingredient categories in the first 4 dimensions (B and D).
CCLUC, ACCML, EUCML, CEDNR, PD, and LOCML are climate change with land-use change, acidification, eutrophication, non-renewable cumulative energy demand, phosphorus demand, and land occupation, respectively. Levels qu1 to qu4 correspond to the 1st to 4th quartiles of each variable.
Fig 4.
Factorial maps from Multiple Correspondence Analysis and Hierarchical Clustering, with representation of point classes of feed ingredients: Class 1—highest impacts for CCLUC, ACCML, EUCML, CEDNR, PD, and LOCML; Class 2 with the- lowest impacts for CCLUC, ACCML, EUCML, CEDNR, PD, and LOCML; Class 3—intermediate impacts for EUCML, PD, LOCML, 2nd quartile impacts for ACCML and 3rd quartile impacts for CCLUC and CEDNR; Class 4—intermediate impacts for CCLUC, ACCML, EUCML, CEDNR, and LOCML; Class 5—intermediate impacts for CCLUC, CEDNR PD, and LOCML,; Class 6—high PD impacts and 3rd quartile impacts for CCLUC, EUCMand CEDNR L.
A corresponds to dimensions 1 and 2 and B to dimensions 3 and 4.
Fig 5.
Comparison of impact assessment results per kg of feed ingredient for cereals, legumes, and oil and protein crops in the ECOALIM and Agri-Footprint databases for (A) climate change ILCD (kg CO2-eq), (B) non-renewable energy (MJ), (C) freshwater eutrophication ILCD (kg P-eq) and (D) acidification ILCD (molc H+-eq).
Note that freshwater eutrophication has two axes, which correspond to (left) ECOALIM and (right) Agri-Footprint.
Fig 6.
Diagram of potential uses of the ECOALIM dataset.
The blue pathway corresponds to the methodology classically used when estimating environmental impacts of feeds and animal products at the farm gate. The red pathway illustrates the methodology used when evaluating strategies to mitigate environmental impacts of feeds and animal products at the field gate.