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Purpose: Agricultural production, which dominates the environmental impacts of the food sector, has specific characteristics that need to be considered in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. Agricultural systems are open, difficult to manage and control, strongly depend on natural resources and their impacts are highly variable and influenced by soil, climate and farm management. A specific framework, efficient methods and tools are thus needed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of agricultural systems. Methods: We present the Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment (SALCA) concept and method, developed for a detailed and specific analysis of agricultural systems. It comprises rules for the definition of system boundaries, functional unit and allocation, emission models, a life cycle inventory (LCI) database, calculation tools, impact assessment methods and concepts for analysis, interpretation and communication. This paper focuses on emission models for gaseous N, nitrate leaching, P emissions to water, soil erosion, pesticides, heavy metals, emissions from animal production and impact assessment methods for soil quality and biodiversity. The models are calculated at the crop, field, animal group and farm levels and are integrated in a consistent and harmonised framework, which is ensured by exchanging intermediate results between models. Results and discussion: The SALCA concept has been applied in numerous LCA studies for crops and crop products, cropping systems, animal husbandry systems and animal products, food and feed products, farms and product groups, the agrifood sector and food systems. The SALCA methodology has also been a backbone of the LCI databases ecoinvent, AGRIBALYSE and the World Food LCA database. The strengths of SALCA lie in its comprehensiveness, specificity to agriculture, harmonisation, broad applicability, consistency, comparability, flexibility and modularity. The extensive data demand and the high complexity, however, limit the application of SALCA to experts. The geographical scope is limited to Central and Western Europe, with a special focus on Switzerland. However, due to the modular and flexible design, an adaptation to other contexts is feasible with reasonable effort. Conclusions: SALCA enables answering a wide range of research questions related to environmental assessment and is applicable to various goals and scopes. A further development would be the inclusion of the social and economic dimensions to perform a full sustainability analysis in the SALCAsustain framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a correction notice for an article titled "Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment: A method to assess the emissions and environmental impacts of agricultural systems and products" published in the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. The correction addresses an error in Figure 2 of the original article, which has now been corrected. The correction notice also includes a statement from the publisher, Springer Nature, emphasizing their neutrality and impartiality. The authors of the original article are listed as Thomas Nemecek, Andreas Roesch, Maria Bystricky, Philippe Jeanneret, Jens Lansche, Martin Stüssi, and Gérard Gaillard. [Extracted from the article]

The article offers information on the 69th LCA forum of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology held in Zurich, Switzerland on September 13, 2018 which focuses on life cycle assessment (LCA). It mentions several speakers at the forum who discussed topics about regionalized life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and life cycle inventories (LCI) including Stephan Pfister, Josef Känzig, and Philippe Stolz.

Food production causes large environmental impacts. In Switzerland, more than half of the initial potato production is not directly consumed by humans but lost. To analyze the environmental impacts caused by these losses, we conducted a Life Cycle Assessment concerning the demand for nonrenewable energy resources, the global warming potential, human toxicity and ecotoxicity (terrestrial and aquatic). We allocated these environmental impacts at each stage of the Swiss potato supply chain to marketable potatoes and potato losses. Furthermore, this study investigated how potential loss reduction scenarios and various loss treatments (animal feed, biogas, incineration) might affect the total ecological performance of the supply chain. The results showed that potato losses were responsible for 39% of the total terrestrial ecotoxicity, 31% of the total potato supply chain's global warming potential, 31% of its human toxicity, 27% of its aquatic ecotoxicity and 23% of its demand for nonrenewable energy resources. The results indicated in general that environmental benefits due to the loss treatments were bigger than benefits achieved by the loss reduction scenarios. Loss treatments, in particular feeding and fermentation, could reduce the examined impacts, but not generating losses represented a better option, especially at the household stage (the impacts here were 8–42 times as high as the impacts of losses at agricultural production). A combination of loss reduction and loss treatment could overcompensate the environmental impacts caused by potato losses because potatoes may be used to substitute for other goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]