Sustainability performance of soybean and beef chains in Latin America

Summary

Sustainability Performance of Soybean and Beef Chains in Latin America

The objective of this thesis, was to analyze the sustainability performance of soybean and beef production chains in Latin America (LA). First identifying a set of sustainability issues of soybean and beef production chains in a LA-EU context was carried out. Sustainability issues were found to vary across stakeholders’ interests. Next, the environmental and economic performance of four feeding strategies for beef production in southern Brazil were evaluated. Results showed that improved pasture is a promising system as it results in the best environmental and economic performance. Furthermore, the environmental, economic, and social performance of genetically modified (GM), non-genetically modified (non-GM), and organic soybean production was evaluated by capturing the uncertainty of key parameters. Results revealed that none of these systems performed best for all sustainability issues evaluated. Multi-criteria assessment (MCA) has the capability of giving a single overall score per system by aggregating sustainability scores using relative importance weights provided by stakeholders. The results showed that there is potential to use expert elicitation as an alternative to extensive data rich methods. The simulation results showed a higher variation for the organic soybean production system compared to GM and non-GM.