R (Roline) Broekema, MSc

Graduating from Wageningen University in 2005, studying Animal Sciences, I started my career at the Ministry of Agriculture, where I developed and monitored subsidy arrangements. In 2009 I started working at Blonk Consultants where Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was at the core of all my activities. I performed LCAs for many different agricultural and food products, from cradle to grave. I also worked on the development of several Life Cycle Inventory databases, like Agri-footprint and Agribalyse and the development of novel methodologies like the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) category rules.

There are two specific topics which I have worked on extensively: protein transition and sustainable nutrition. In the context of the protein transition I have compared the environmental impact of many meat replacement products to animal-based products and identified opportunities for food producing companies and governmental organizations. In the context of sustainable nutrition I investigated dietary shifts using optimization on both diets and food products to meet climate goals and nutritional constraints.     

Quantifying the environmental impact will benefit the sustainability of products, because a well founded decision is for sure a better one than a decision based on gut feeling. There is growing recognition in society that we need to comprehensively re-examine the sustainability of agro-food production, encompassing food, animal feed, non-food and energy products.