Life cycle assessment for evaluating mixed farming systems: a review and recommendations

The objective of this work was twofold: i) to characterise the main applications of the life cycle assessment (LCA) for assessing and representing mixed farming systems (MFS), and then ii) to propose a general methodological framework for conducting a comparative LCA of a case study of an MFS versus a specialised system in Romania. For this purpose, the main applications of LCA to MFS have been analysed in all its phases. Overall, the reviewed LCA studies highlighted the potential of MFS to improve environmental sustainability, but scarcity of real data hindered the assessment process. In addition, some studies focused on a single product rather than taking into account all products (crops and livestock) when comparing MFS with specialised ones. This may exclude interactions between farm components in the MFS and therefore may not reflect the overall impact of these systems. Therefore, an LCA based on a farm-level approach is recommended to provide a fairer comparison of MFS versus specialised systems.