World Food LCA Database

Food-related activities account for an estimated 28% of global GHG emissions and are key drivers of land-use change, water consumption and pollution, and biodiversity loss. Aligning current production and consumption models in the agri-food sector with planetary boundaries is vital for constructing a resilient food system and ensuring companies continue to thrive in a resource-constrained world.

To accelerate this shift, companies need ambitious science-based sustainability strategies built on robust metrics. The World Food LCA Database provides players across the agri-food value chain with high-quality emissions factors and environmental footprint data (including carbon, water, and land) to help them better understand the impacts of their products and bolster decision-making.

World Food LCA Database WFLDB

2600+

Datasets and 2300+ sub-datasets

Including agricultural raw materials, processing, fertilizer production, food products, land-use change… covering productions in 150 countries

15+

International partners

Involved throughout the development, including agronomist experts, research institutes, traders and brand-owners

“Through WFLDB, Quantis is providing useful and high-quality LCA data on the impacts of food supply chains. This information is critical to good decision-making, and will inform and support sustainability strategies across the industry for years to come.”

Kevin Rabinovitch, Global Sustainability Director, Mars Incorporated

“Control Union is pleased to participate in the World Food LCA Database initiative. With our global boots-on-the-ground, we are well-positioned to provide an in-depth verification of the data sets. Our experience and expertise in the food sector will enhance the accuracy of the data. We believe that it's critically important that the food sector and other stakeholders [are able to] rely on sound measurements backed by field corroboration.”

Alfredo Gonzales, President, Control Union Certifications North America, LLC

“Since 2012, Quantis has demonstrated its capacity to bring major stakeholders from agricultural and food value chains around the table to work hand in hand, and has delivered over 2600 environmental footprint datasets that are now being used to define corporate emission reduction targets and sustainability strategies.”

Tereza Levova Data Team Lead / Principal Sustainability Expert Quantis

Catalyzing agri-food sector transformation with sound science + collaboration

The World Food LCA Database is a comprehensive, international life cycle inventory database and global initiative led by Quantis in partnership with leaders in the agri-food sector.

The database was launched in 2012 in response to a widespread need for reliable, transparent and coherent environmental data and a consistent methodology for assessing the impacts of agri-food products. WFLDB fills this critical gap by developing datasets reflecting average practices.

2,600+ datasets and 2,500 sub-datasets for 130+ products in 150+ countries

World Food LCA Database WFLDB Datasets
View the list of datasets

WFLDB development principles

  • Highly transparent, disaggregated, and documented datasets
  • Developed in collaboration with international partners, including industrials, sector experts, research institutes
  • Using a broad range of data sources: primary data from industrials or research organization, and secondary data from publications and statistics
  • Covering all impact categories to evaluate impacts on nature (beyond carbon, covering water, land use, etc.)
  • Reviewed by external experts

Get access to the WFLDB

The WFLDB is currently available via our platform eQosphere.

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Additional information

Follow the link below to download a ZIP file of the WFLDB documentation, including the dataset list developed in Phase 1 + 2, methodological guidelines and dataset review report.

Download now

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