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 scarcity, biodiversity loss and eutrophication. 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.

The-World-Food-LCA-Database---WFLDB Sustainability
“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 2000 environmental footprint datasets that are now being used to define corporate emission reduction targets and sustainability strategies.”

Xavier Bengoa, Senior Sustainability Consultant and Agrifood 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 Phase 1 and 2 filled this critical gap by developing datasets reflecting country average practices. 

Phases 1 + 2 >
2,300+ datasets for 120 products in 56 countries

The-World-Food-LCA-Database-WFLDB - Datasets and prodcts
View the list of datasets

Phase 3 >
The evolution of WFLDB

Objectives of WFLDB Phase 3 (2020 to 2023)

1+ Develop datasets reflecting typologies of farming practices and supply chain interventions.
More granular data on the various typologies of farming practices and supply chain interventions will support decision-making and tracking improvements over time.

2+ Continue to fill existing data gaps to comprehensively cover agri-food value chain.
Data gaps still exist for certain products categories and sourcing areas.

3+ Maintain, update and improve datasets developed in Phases 1 and 2.
To keep the database accurate, existing data must continuously be maintained, updated and improved.

For the third phase of the initiative, Quantis has partnered with Control Union Certifications, an independent inspection and certification body focused on developing services around the sustainability of the agriculture, forestry and textile industries.

Control Union Certifications will draw on its extensive sector expertise and experience developing and implementing private sustainability programs to support the definition of relevant farming typologies and development of representative datasets.

Become a project partner

Contact us at to discuss how you can become a WFLDB Phase 3 project partner.

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

WFLDB Phase 3 Stakeholders

Project partners count some of the world’s leading agri-food companies, including:

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