Assesment of three pork production systems in the Netherlands

Three different pork production systems in the Netherlands are compared in a LCA using 5 environmental impact categories: global warming potential, fossil energy use, eutrophication potential, land use and water use. The local pork production system using locally cultivated and residual food products as feed and on farm produced bio-energy has the lowest environmental impacts in all 5 categories. Cultivation and transport of feed products and to a lesser extent manure management are the process steps where the largest environmental impacts occur for all cases.