'ProChain': The next Protein value Chain - Development of novel methods to quantify environmental impacts, integrate choice behaviours and bottom-up exploration of food system transition pathways

In the EU, about 60% of the human protein demand is satisfied by animal-based protein sources. The livestock farming necessary to satisfy this demand is responsible for more than 80% of the NH3 and GHG emissions as well as nearly 70% of the biodiversity loss. Therefore, the EU has declared a need to reinvent the farm-to-fork value chain and to initiate a protein transition that entails reduced per capita protein consumption, the increased use of non-animal based protein sources and technological advances. Current assessments of the protein farm-to-fork value chain lack the integration of environmental systems analyses, socio-economics and engineering to adequately understand and quantify the environmental impacts of transition pathways. The aim of the ProChain project is to address these shortcoming by merging the strengths from these different disciplines and to develop novel methods and insights in three areas: i) the effective combination of life cycle assessment and material flow analysis to provide a farm-to-fork perspective on environmental impacts, while including the valorization of by-products and identification of marginal suppliers; ii) the elicitation of choice behaviors of actors along the value chain, to quantify the choice variables that shape transition pathways and; iii) to develop a prospective approach to LCA/MFA using technology assessment and socio-economic methods to quantify the environmental impacts of plausible future protein transition pathways. The pork meat production system in Flanders is used as a case from which prospective development pathways will be generated and evaluated using consequential LCA, the structural analysis approach, causal loop diagrams, technology learning & diffusion, innovation adaption concepts, bottom-up scenarios, change propagation & input-output modelling. By integrating these different methods from environmental sciences, engineering and socio-economics novel insights into the options for the manipulation the protein value chain at its environmental consequences will be generated.

Keywords:IMPACT ANALYSIS, ENVIRONMENT

Disciplines:Statistics and numerical methods not elsewhere classified, Environmental impact and risk assessment, Natural resource management, Mathematical methods, programming models, mathematical and simulation modelling, Multiple or simultaneous equation models, multiple variables, Mathematical and quantitative methods not elsewhere classified