RT Journal Article
T1 A material flow or life cycle analysis perspective for the Water-Energy-Food nexus assessment of organisations? A comparative study
A1 Vasquez-Ibarra, Leonardo
A1 Rebolledo Leiva, Ricardo
A1 Entrena-Barbero, Eduardo
A1 Fernández, Mario
A1 Feijoo Costa, Gumersindo
A1 González García, Sara
A1 Moreira Vilar, María Teresa
K1 WEF nexus
K1 Material flow analysis
K1 Life cycle assessment
K1 Data envelopment analysis
K1 Dairy farms
AB Nowadays, food production systems play a relevant role as the steady increase of global population and food demand. The water-energy-food (WEF) nexus is a suitable approach to tackle resources management associated with these three pillars recognizing synergies and trade-offs. Different approaches have been used in the liter ature to measure the WEF nexus, being material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA), two of the most proven methodologies. The MFA approach is based on the amount of resources consumed, while using the LCA perspective considers all flows of the system (LCA footprints approach) or considering only the flows associated with water, energy, and food pillars as the inventory data (WEF-LCA approach). This manuscript compares the three mentioned approaches to identify their strengths and weaknesses. To do this, a sample of 100 Spanish dairy farms is analysed, where a single WEF nexus index (WEFni) is obtained using Data Envelopment Analysis. Results show that only four farms achieved a WEFni equal to 100 in all approaches, while the main difference between them is the number and type of resources considered for calculating the WEF nexus, which could imply a partial identification of hotspots of food systems.
PB Elsevier
YR 2024
FD 2024-09-01
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10347/38870
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10347/38870
LA eng
NO Vásquez-Ibarra, L., Rebolledo-Leiva, R., Entrena-Barbero, E., Fernández, M., Feijoo, G., González-García, S., & Moreira, M. T. (2024). A material flow or life cycle analysis perspective for the water-energy-food nexus assessment of organisations? a comparative study. Future Foods, 10, 100444.
NO Department of Computing and Industries, Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Universidad Católica del Maule, Av. San Miguel, Talca 3605, Chile
NO Centro de Innovación en Ingeniería Aplicada (CIIA), Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Universidad Católica del Maule, Av. San Miguel, Talca 3605, Chile
NO CRETUS, Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, 15705, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
NO Galician Association of Agri-food Cooperatives, Santiago de Compostela 15703, Spain
NO Xunta de Galicia (ED481A-2021/164, ED431C-2021/37)
DS Minerva
RD 28 abr 2026