Life Cycle Assessment of Iberian Traditional Pig Production System in Spain

Sandrine Espagnol,Alessandra N. T. R. Monteiro,Isabel Blanco-Penedo,Florence Garcia-Launay,Javier García-Gudiño

doi:10.3390/su12020627

Abstract

Traditional Iberian pig production is characterized by outdoor systems that produce animals fed with natural resources. The aim of this study was to assess the environmental impacts of such systems through Life Cycle Assessment. Environmental impacts were analysed per kilogram of live weight at farm gate. Iberian pig production in montanera had the lowest impacts for climate change (CC), acidification (AC), eutrophication (EU) and cumulative energy demand (CED), being 3.4 kg CO2 eq, 0.091 molc H+ eq, 0.046 kg PO43− eq, and 20.7 MJ, respectively, due to the strict use of natural resources (acorns and grass) during the fattening period. As Iberian farms had a greater dependence on compound feed in cebo campo, environmental impacts on CC, AC, EU and CED were 22, 17, 95 and 28% higher, respectively, than with montanera. For land occupation (LO), however, cebo campo had a lower impact (31.6 m2·year) than montanera (43.0 m2·year) system. Traditional Iberian pig production systems have environmental impacts higher than conventional systems studied in literature but are similar to other traditional systems. Based on the present assessment, it is necessary to account for the contribution of emissions resulting from the consumption of natural resources to avoid the underestimation of environmental impacts.

Highlights

Environmental impacts derived from livestock production have received increasing attention in recent times [1], with pig production being one of the main contributors [2]
Traditional Iberian pig production has lower climate change, eutrophication, acidification and cumulative energy demand impacts when relying on montanera fattening than when relying on cebo campo fattening
Land occupation impact is increased with montanera fattening due to the use of large surfaces to provide natural resources to the animals

Summary

Introduction

Environmental impacts derived from livestock production have received increasing attention in recent times [1], with pig production being one of the main contributors [2]. Many studies estimated the level of these impacts for conventional pig production through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), which is the most recognized methodology to do so [4]. Recent studies focusing on alternative systems, such as organic [7,8,9,10] or traditional pig production [11,12] highlighted that such systems usually have higher impacts than conventional ones. They use more compound feeds than conventional systems and fatten pigs to a heavier live weight of elder pigs at slaughter. Few studies suggested that lower impacts may be achieved by outdoor traditional productions with local breeds [13,14,15], given that they strongly rely on the consumption of natural resources available on grasslands and rangelands (e.g., acorns, chestnuts, grass)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion