Compare methods

	Foodshed Analysis	Food-System Life Cycle Assessment
Field	Food Agriculture Studies	Food Agriculture Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2009	2018
Originator	Christian J. Peters, Nelson L. Bills, Jennifer L. Wilkins, Gary W. Fick & Arthur J. Lembo	ISO 14040/14044 LCA framework; food-system synthesis by Joseph Poore & Thomas Nemecek
Type	Spatial modelling pipeline for food-source areas and localization capacity	Cradle-to-grave environmental modelling pipeline for foods and diets
Seminal source	Peters, C. J., Bills, N. L., Lembo, A. J., Wilkins, J. L., & Fick, G. W. (2009). Mapping potential foodsheds in New York State: A spatial model for evaluating the capacity to localize food production. Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 24(1), 72-84.	Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), 987-992.
Aliases	Foodshed Modelling, Foodshed Mapping, Food Self-Sufficiency Analysis, Localization Capacity Analysis	Food LCA, Agri-food Life Cycle Assessment, Dietary Life Cycle Assessment, Cradle-to-Grave Food Footprinting
Related	4	4
Summary	Foodshed analysis is a spatial method for understanding where a population's food comes from, or could come from, by analogy with a watershed: just as a watershed delineates the land that drains to a river, a foodshed delineates the land area capable of feeding a given population centre. Christian Peters, Nelson Bills, Jennifer Wilkins, Gary Fick and Arthur Lembo formalised the modern, spatially explicit version in 2009, mapping potential foodsheds in New York State by matching geographically distributed agricultural production capacity to the food demand of population centres and allocating supply by proximity. The result quantifies how much of a region's food needs could be met locally — its localization capacity and self-sufficiency — and which land areas would supply which cities. Foodshed analysis has become a core tool for assessing the feasibility and sustainability of regional and local food systems.	Food-system life cycle assessment (LCA) quantifies the environmental footprint of a food, meal or diet across its entire life cycle — from agricultural inputs on the farm, through processing, packaging, transport, retail and cooking, to waste disposal. Following the ISO 14040/14044 framework, an analyst defines a functional unit (such as one kilogram of food, 100 grams of protein, or 1000 kilocalories), compiles a life-cycle inventory of all inputs and emissions at each stage, characterises those flows into impact indicators (greenhouse-gas emissions, land and water use, eutrophication and acidification), and interprets the result with sensitivity and uncertainty analysis. Poore and Nemecek's 2018 Science synthesis, covering tens of thousands of farms worldwide, showed that impacts vary as much as fifty-fold among producers of the same product and that even the lowest-impact animal foods typically exceed plant substitutes — establishing LCA as the central tool for comparing the sustainability of foods and diets.