Summary

Agroscope is hosting the 15th Life Cycle Assessment Platform for Agriculture and Food Systems on May 5, 2026 at its Zurich-Reckenholz location and online. The conference brings together experts from research, practice, and administration to discuss assessment methods for climate protection potentials in agriculture. Registration is possible until April 28, 2026; media professionals are invited to participate.

People

  • Gabriela Brändle (Agroscope)

Topics

  • Life cycle assessment and climate protection
  • Agriculture and sustainability
  • Research-practice transfer
  • Food systems

Clarus Lead

The Agroscope expert conference addresses a central governance problem: How can the climate protection potential of agriculture be systematically assessed and implemented in practice? Agriculture and food systems contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, but simultaneously offer significant opportunities for emission reductions through improved management and technological innovations. The event focuses on life cycle assessment as a standardized assessment methodology that comprehensively depicts climate impacts and sustainability goals.

Detailed Summary

Life cycle assessment is an established procedure for quantifying environmental impacts in agriculture. It functions at multiple levels – from individual farms to entire food systems – and reveals synergies and trade-offs between different environmental goals. By integrating additional assessment methods, economic and social sustainability dimensions can also be mapped.

However, the central obstacle remains the gap between research and practice. Concrete challenges include practice-oriented preparation of research results, understandable communication of complex content, transparent presentation of data gaps and uncertainties, and the definition of uniform benchmarking criteria. Different analytical tools frequently lead to diverging results, which practitioners find difficult to comprehend.

The conference is aimed at innovation managers from the private sector as well as representatives from associations, administration, and research. The program is offered in German and English; interviews with experts can be coordinated through the media service.

Key Messages

  • Life cycle assessment is a scientifically established method for comprehensive evaluation of climate impacts and sustainability potentials in agriculture and food systems
  • The research-practice gap remains the main obstacle: standardization, data quality, and comprehensibility must be improved
  • Uniform criteria and benchmarks are required to enable comparable and comprehensible assessments

Critical Questions

  1. Data Quality: What data gaps currently exist in life cycle assessment of agricultural systems, and how are these handled in the various analytical tools?

  2. Methodological Consistency: Why do different life cycle assessment tools lead to diverging results, and what standards should be proposed on the platform for harmonization?

  3. Implementation Barriers: What concrete measures are being discussed to make research results practical for small and medium-sized farms?

  4. Trade-offs: How are conflicts of interest between climate protection, biodiversity, soil health, and economic profitability made transparent in the assessment?

  5. Governance: Who defines the uniform criteria and thresholds for benchmarking, and how is independence from industry interests ensured?

  6. Scope: To what extent are Scope 3 emissions (transport, packaging, consumption) systematically captured in the assessments, or is the focus primarily on production emissions?

Source Directory

Primary Source: Agroscope Media Release – news.admin.ch

Verification Status: ✓ 24.03.2026

This text was created with the support of an AI model. Editorial responsibility: clarus.news | Fact-checking: 24.03.2026