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Sustainable agricultural and food processing practices are often proposed as attractive strategies enabling food systems to respond to the challenges posed by climate change in terms of adaptation and mitigation. However, information on the actual contribution to climate change provided by sustainable food production systems is lacking in literature. With the intention to contribute to a more informed debate, this study aims at quantify the actual impact on climate of sustainable practices applied to a grape-to-wine system in Italy. The overall budget of greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes is assessed at wine farm level, from the vineyard to the final bottle of wine, through an integration of methods, including the eddy covariance technique, the life cycle assessment (LCA) and the IPCC guidelines. All the components of the GHG budget have been considered: the (a) biogenic GHG fluxes and the (b) anthropogenic GHG emissions generated for the grape production as well as the (c) carbon stock change due to the vineyard management and the (d) anthropogenic GHG emissions generated by the transformation of grape into wine. At the vineyard level, the overall GHG budget resulted to be close to zero, showing a potential carbon neutrality of sustainable viticulture: the sum of biogenic GHG fluxes (a) and the carbon stock change (c) resulted in a net carbon sink with a potential contribution to climate change mitigation of −0,27 ± 1,11 Mg CO2eq year−1 per hectare; while the anthropogenic GHG emissions (b) for the sustainable vineyard management accounted for 0,24 ± 0,05 Mg CO2eq ha−1 year−1. The total carbon footprint (b + d) of sustainable wine is 0,79 ± 0,14 kg CO2eq per bottle, with 15% attributable to the agricultural phase and 85% to the transformation of grape into wine. These findings indicate that sustainable wine production has in general a lower contribution to climate change. In particular, sustainable practices applied to viticulture can turn the system into a net carbon sink able to totally compensate the anthropogenic emissions for the vineyard management. Therefore, sustainable viticulture allows food production with a potential carbon neutrality without exacerbating climate change.

The 2030 European Union (EU) climate and energy policy framework includes for the first time a dedicated instrument concerning greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions and removals from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF). Regulation 2018/841 (LULUCF Regulation) marks a significant expansion of EU climate and energy acquis, with ramifications in other sensitive areas, such as agriculture, renewable energy from wood biomass and forestry. The Regulation has had a particularly troubled negotiation history and has already been at the centre of litigation before the Court of Justice of the EU. This article analyses the implications of the LULUCF Regulation for the EU’s climate ambition in the next decade, trying to make sense of its troubled history and of its projected impacts, with a view to ascertaining whether the scepticism with which it has been welcomed is justified.

Despite many studies in literature demonstrate the environmental sustainability of organic food, a debate is still open in the scientific community on the effect of organic farming on global warming and climate change mitigation. This paper aims to contribute to a more informed debate on the actual contribution to climate change in terms of GHG emissions of organic and conventional agriculture. For this purpose, the production process of an organic vs conventional wholemeal bread locally produced in central Italy by a small-medium bakery enterprise was compared and the carbon footprint (CF) was assessed by means of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology.We found that the CF of 1 kg of the conventional wholemeal bread was 24% less respect to the same organic bread, with 1,18 and 1,55 kg CO(2)eq respectively. On the contrary, if the CF is assessed per unit of cultivated area (hectare), wheat organic cultivation showed a better performance in terms of GHG emissions than conventional by 60%, with 1,15 and 2,87 Mg CO(2)eq ha(-1) respectively. The higher CF per unit of organic product is due to the lower yield per unit of area cultivated with organic farming and to the consequent attribution to a smaller amount of products of the GHG emissions generated in the field phase of the life cycle. Whereas, the CF per hectare is higher when conventional practices are applied due to the higher use of raw materials (higher seed density, agrochemicals for fertilization and plant protection) respect to the same organic system.Results of the study demonstrate that organic farming for wheat cultivation in Italy is a low-carbon agriculture with a lower contribution to climate change in terms of GHG emissions per hectare respect to the conventional wheat cultivation, although implications of the reduced productivity and the consequent need of more cultivated land should be considered. However, more research is needed to better explore the potential of organic farming and to improve organic food production, optimizing the balance between the use of resources and yields, to ensure sufficient organic food supply at global level.A more comprehensive assessment of the actual GHG emitted in the atmosphere from both organic and conventional agricultural systems can be provided when the CF is assessed per unit of area, in addition to the CF per product unit, especially if also the carbon sink of the agrosystem is included. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The land sector plays a crucial role in the context of climate change, being both a contributor to the problem and part of its solution. On one side, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture, forestry and other land uses (AFOLU sector) cover the 24% of global emissions, representing the second hot spot in the contribution to climate change after the energy sector. On the other side, this sector offers the exclusive capacity to remove atmospheric carbon dioxide and store it in soils and biomass.The challenge is to understand the extent to which sustainable land management can be a valuable solution to increase the mitigation potential of the land sector, particularly at small-scale rural landscape level. A land-based approach is developed and tested for application at small-scale rural landscape level, aiming at reducing and offsetting GHG emissions from the livestock activities, one of the main sources of GHG emissions of the whole agricultural sector. The proposed land-based approach builds on an ensemble of methodologies, including Geographic Information System (GIS) elaboration, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and methodologies from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that allow estimating livestock GHG emissions and the mitigation potential of sustainable land-use options applied in the same small-scale rural landscape (e.g. improvement of ruminants’ diet, biogas from manure, reduction of synthetic fertilizers, minimum/no-tillage, natural herbaceous cover, reuse of agricultural residues, new orchards and forests on marginal lands).Results from a case study in Italy show that land-based mitigation options applied at small-scale rural landscape level can reduce and completely offset the GHG livestock emissions of the same area, leading to carbon neutral livestock systems, in line with the objectives of the EU Green Deal and the global climate commitments. Thus, this study confirms that the land sector can strongly contribute to climate change mitigation if sustainable land-use options are applied. Moreover, when sustainable land-use options are applied with a proximity approach in a small-scale, the results are not limited to the carbon neutrality of the livestock production but involve also other tangible environmental and socio-economic benefits in the territory (e.g. sustainable agriculture, biodiversity protection, water and air quality, new green areas, tourism, well-being etc.). A such sustainable land-based approach can be applied to all food systems (not only livestock) and can be scaled at global level involving an infinite number of districts (organized at local, regional or national level) with the potential to influence globally the food production toward a sustainable model of the whole land sector. The implementation of a such sustainable land management aiming to a carbon neutral food production can be supported at public policies level, under the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Carbon Farming schemes, but also by the private sector in the framework of voluntary carbon mechanisms.