Biodiversity impact of agricultural products: A generic method applied to Food Quality Schemes in France

Par Sarah Huet (post-doc à l’UMR CESAER à INRAE Dijon, co-encadrée par Clélia Sirami) 

Biodiversity erosion is a major environmental crisis. Although our agri-food system contributes to the five main direct threats to biodiversity, the assessment of the impact of food products remains limited either to in situ measurements that do not allow for estimate generalization, or to systematic models that are not validated by in situ data. Here we propose the BVIAS (Biodiversity Value Increment from Agricultural Statistics) method, which allows to calculate the impact of food products on biodiversity based on accounting data and public statistics. This method, applied here to renown French agricultural products, allows for a comparison of the main Food Quality Schemes (FQSs): Organic production, Label Rouge (LR) and Geographical Indications (GIs). Thus, among the 25 evaluated FQSs, only Organic products and some cheese GIs stand out from non-certified (so-called conventional) agriculture by effectively different agricultural practices, Consistent with the requirements of the specifications. These different agricultural practices lead to a lower impact on biodiversity per hectare but lower yields, resulting in a similar impact or higher per tonne. Taking into account the main determinants of biodiversity losses related to agriculture, relying on quantified data at the level of farms and validating our model based on consensual orders of magnitude of biodiversity in the literature, we therefore propose here an objective, robust and operational method to allow a generalized estimate of the impact on biodiversity of any agri-food production.