Environmental cost of food: the delicate balance between food security and natural resources

With more than seven billion people in the planet, we need to create a balance between food security and natural resources. The environmental implications of agri-food chains is a strategic issue in a local/territorial perspective: for both farms and business companies, the improvement of their environmental performances is an increasingly competitive element and the environmental valorization of rural systems represents a key factor particularly for marginal area development. With the aim of enhancing this debate, this talk will focus on the environmental cost of food and the life cycle assessment method. Based on the life-cycle thinking, this approach allows measuring food sustainability under all its aspects/dimensions.