AGRICULTURAL REFERENCE SYSTEMS IN LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS - Economics of Sustainable Energy in Agriculture - page 105

changes as given in Figure 8.3, it was assumed that the environmental
impacts of agricultural production of the same product are equal in all
countries - an assumption that may be challenged but which will not
influence the results significantly with regard to the quantitative parameters
considered here. Therefore e.g. regarding maize production in Germany
and France respectively (example 3), the effects 'cancel' each other out,
since maize will be produced in both cases - either in Germany or in
France. This effectively leaves the comparison of the production of the
'target product' (rape seed) versus fallow set-aside, natural fallow or
rainforest. In the case of the latter two, the environmental impacts are
considered to be zero, while for fallow set-aside there are certain effects
due to fallow maintenance. These differences can be seen in Figure 8.5,
revealing that they only reach a significant scale with regard to
is in fact the only quantifiable parameter where the reference area (fallow
set-aside) has a noticable effect on the overall result due to significant
emissions from fallow maintenance. Another parameter, though not yet
quantifiable, which is influenced directly by the reference area in this case
is biodiversity: the clearing of a rain forest area for rape seed production
obviously has a greater impact with regard to this parameter than the
cultivation of an area that would otherwise remain fallow set-aside land.
Thus, since firstly all chains of land use changes within an
agricultural reference system must end with a non-productive land use,
since secondly the effects of all other parts of the chain cancel each other
out, and since finally the differences in the environmental effects between
the production of an agricultural good and various forms of fallow land in
this case are fairly similar with regard to the quantifiable parameters
selected, it follows that the main effect of the reference system is not due to
agriculture but to other processes such as transport.
Therefore it can be argued that if only the direct effects of land use
are considered, in this case there is little difference in the results whether
rape seed is produced on set-aside land or instead of maize. This difference
only becomes significant if indirect effects such as transport etc. are also
considered.
3.2 Different geographical boundaries
From the findings in Section 3.1 a further conclusion can be derived, which
shall be explained by example 5: if for certain reasons ( e.g. political or
economic) the geographic boundary of the LCA is chosen to be limited to a
certain country or region, i.e. if only the environmental impacts within this