Life cycle assessment in agriculture is a data-intensive methodology which in addition to environmental and production data for calculating direct emissions also requires data on the environmental impacts of the upstream and downstream sectors. These data are collected and prepared so as to allow their storage as LCIs in databases and are thus available for further use.
Agroscope develops and maintains the SALCA database with hundreds of life cycle inventories for Swiss agriculture. The regular updating of these LCIs is an important task. Apart from this, and depending on the field of application, different variants of the LCIs are developed and data gaps are filled, e.g. for agricultural sector modelling or product LCAs. Agroscope is working on this project together with other well-known database producers such as the non-for-profit association ecoinvent.
In 2024, 136 new life cycle inventories for important field crops in Switzerland were published at ecoinvent. These LCIs enable a distinction according to altitude (plain, hill and mountain regions) and cultivation system (organic or conventional).
