Agribalyse v3.2 - methods and changes
Summary
| Publisher |
Agence de l'environnement et de la maîtrise de l'énergie (ADEME) - facteurs d'émissions de la Base Carbone
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| Full name | Agribalyse |
| Description |
AGRIBALYSE® is France's reference database for the environmental impacts of agricultural products produced in France and food products consumed in the country. Based on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), it evaluates impacts from farm to fork across multiple areas (climate, water, air, soil, etc.). AGRIBALYSE offers open access to several datasets, including processed food, conventional and organic raw agricultural products, and animal feed. Full documentation and data are available at www.agribalyse.fr.
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| Version nr. | v3.2 |
Source Documents
All files can be find on the AGRIBALYSE 3.2 data repository
Methodology Readout Notes
General Methodology
No breakdown by individual GHG is available. All values are in CO₂e; therefore, no GWP adjustment was applied.
Each emission factor from the food products file is split into four separate entries, one per cumulative supply chain stage. The consumption stage is excluded, as this has limited application in corporate carbon footprints and leads to overestimations.
Some agricultural products (conv and bio files) are only available at the farm gate and generate therefore a single entry per product.
| Source stage (FR) | English | Present in |
|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | Agriculture | All stages |
| Transformation | Processing | Cradle to processing gate and downstream |
| Emballage | Packaging | Cradle to packaging gate and downstream |
| Transport | Transport | Cradle to supermarket gate |
| Supermarché et distribution | Supermarket and distribution | Cradle to supermarket gate |
EF Value Mapping
Agribalyse's three climate sub-indicators map to platform fields as follows. The biogenic field differs between Agriculture and downstream stages. Upstream agricultural activities (fertilizer production, machinery, equipment) are bundled into the Agriculture stage by Agribalyse and cannot be separated. Because their land vs. fossil classification is ambiguous, all fossil-indicator values including these upstream activities are retained in Fossil. This is a conservative choice in application of the GHGP LSRS (Land Sector and Removals Standard). Biogenic emissions from the Agriculture stage are classified as land use (lu); from downstream stages as land undefined (lud), since the specific land type cannot be determined there.
| Platform field | Agribalyse sub-indicator (FR) | GHG content | Agriculture | Downstream stages (food products only) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fossil | Changement climatique — émissions fossiles | All fossil GHGs (CO₂e); CO₂ removals assigned GWP = 0 | value_co2eq | value_co2eq |
| Land use (lu) | Changement climatique — émissions biogéniques | bioCO₂, bioCH₄, biogenic removals (CO₂e) | value_co2eq_lu | — |
| Land undefined (lud) | Changement climatique — émissions biogéniques | bioCO₂, bioCH₄, biogenic removals (CO₂e) | — | value_co2eq_lud |
| Land use change (luc) | Changement climatique — émissions liées au changement d'affectation des sols | bioCO₂ only | value_bioco2_luc | value_bioco2_luc |
Value corrections applied:
- value_co2eq_lud = null for all cradle-to-farm gate emission factors (agricultural product files only have an Agriculture stage)
- Where value_bioco2_luc < 0: treated as removal; value_bioco2_luc_rem = net value, value_bioco2_luc = 0
- Where value_bioco2_luc ≥ 0: treated as emission; value_bioco2_luc_rem = 0
Removals note: Negative land values are treated as removals. Within a given stage the net value may combine both emissions and removals. Since disaggregated sub-values are not available, only the net value is reported per stage.
Data Considerations and Notes
Apparent duplicates from excluded consumption stage
Some products in the original AGRIBALYSE source differ only in their consumption stage preparation (e.g. "Asian noodles, flavoured, cooked" vs. "Asian noodles, plain, cooked, unsalted"). Because the consumption stage is excluded, these variants produce identical emission factors across all retained supply chain stages. They appear as separate entries with the same values.
Fossil emissions and upstream agriculture
The Agriculture stage bundles upstream activities (fertilizer production, machinery, buildings) with on-farm emissions. AGRIBALYSE provides no split between these. Keeping all fossil sub-indicator values under Fossil is conservative in the LSRG sense. It is not fully aligned with FLAG (Forest, Land and Agriculture, SBTi) methodology, which allows fertilizer production emissions to be included in the land category. Users submitting a FLAG target may find this classification non-ideal.