Analysis of the overall resource consumption of a Flemish dairy farm using Exergetic Life Cycle Assessment

To deal with environmental challenges such as pollution and resource depletion, the potential environmental impact of agricultural products is commonly evaluated using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. For livestock systems, emission-related impacts such as global warming have been frequently studied in this way. During the past decades, intensifi-cation of agricultural systems to improve yields coincided with an increased material and energy throughput. Therefore, we focus on resource consumption in this paper. We applied an exergy-based approach to quantify total resource use and to calculate resource efficien-cies, both at system level and at life cycle level. We have performed a case study of an in-tensive confinement-based dairy farm in Flanders to illustrate our approach.To deal with environmental challenges such as pollution and resource depletion, the potential environmental impact of agricultural products is commonly evaluated using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. For livestock systems, emission-related impacts such as global warming have been frequently studied in this way. During the past decades, intensifi-cation of agricultural systems to improve yields coincided with an increased material and energy throughput. Therefore, we focus on resource consumption in this paper. We applied an exergy-based approach to quantify total resource use and to calculate resource efficien-cies, both at system level and at life cycle level. We have performed a case study of an in-tensive confinement-based dairy farm in Flanders to illustrate our approach.C