Presented by Anna Woodhouse MSc, PhD - SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden, at the: Young researchers meeting on multifunctional landscapes, Gothenburg June 7-8, 2016.

1. Can a protein production index optimize land use?
Anna Woodhouse MSc, PhD
SIANI Network young researchers meeting, Gothenburg June 7-8
SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden

2. Summary
Protein Production Index
 New methodology- not there yet
 Aim to identify a measure that describes how efficiently a
food production system utilizes the land to produce
protein for human consumption

3. Introduction
 Several issues with land use
 Changed the Earths radiative forcing
 Main driver of biodiversity degradation
 Inappropriate land managament reducing biological
production capacity of soil 1
1 Mila I Canals et al., 2007, Key elements in a framework for land use impact assessment within LCA. Int J
Life Cycle Assess 12:5–15

4. Introduction
 In Life Cycle Assessment
 Land transformation-Land Use Change (LUC)
 phase of transformation is relatively short, and the temporal
dimension is neglected
 Land occupation
 land is used in the intended productive way (e.g. arable field)
 properties of a piece of land are maintained (e.g. the regrowth
of forest is avoided on an arable field)

5. Introduction
 Protein supply for human nutrition- major challenge
 Significant environmental impact both animal and
vegetable protein
 Different resource inputs for different proteins
 Ruminants capability to digest roughage feed
 Feed produced on pastures-land unsuitable for protein
production for human consumption

6. The problem
 m2/kg food is often reported as an indicator
of resource use does not capture the
difference in land quality used in different
food production systems
 Simple- similar to water index used in LCA

7. Protein Production Index (PPI) – How?
 Example: Production of 1 kg of chicken protein requires x m2 land in the region of Västra Götaland and
y m2 in Matto Grosso in Brazil.
 What could have been produced on this land instead?
 PPI = 1 kg protein from chicken / X kg protein from alternative production on the land
 Need some kind of neutral reference…
7

8. Protein production Index (PPI) – How? continued
 Tried to explore if NPP0 was possible as a neutral reference, NPP0 = ’wild’ net
primary production (g C/m2)
 Data availability was difficult, difficult to translate to protein
 Chosen wholegrain bread as the reference, made from the most common bread
crop in the region
 Reference in chicken example: bread from winter wheat for land in VGR and bread
from corn for the land in Brazil
8

9. 9

10. Assumptions
 The alternative production is applied to arable land using average crop yields in
the region
 For land used for grazing on arable and ley the yield is adjusted (average crop
yield is lowered by 10%)
 Land used for semi-natural pasture grazing is considered not to have an
alternative protein production, which ’favours’ milk and beef
10

11. Results
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
Bread Chicken
filet
Minced
pork
Minced
beef
Milk Pea
soup
'Actual' land use [m2a/kg protein]
Seminatural pasture
Soybean
Ley & cultivated pasture
Cropland

12. Protein Production Index
0.0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
0.9
Bread Chicken filet Minced
pork
Minced
beef
Milk Pea soup
Protein index

13. 13
Pros:
 The PPI gives information about land use that takes into account quality of the land
Cons:
 Using bread as a reference is not 100% objective, and bread is not a common food
everywhere in the world (e.g. not in China)
 Common reflection is ’why not use a protein crop as the reference? (even more
difficult to chose a protein crop objectively in different regions – or perhaps not?)
Conclusions

14. Thank you for your attention!