Measure the system
Canola moves through fields, storage, crushing, transport, packaging, kitchens, and recovery. A credible claim names the unit, geography, period, data, co-products, trade-offs, and uncertainty.
Explore individual factorsLifecycle boundary explorer
The co-product question
Field and crushing activities support more than one useful output. Lifecycle studies therefore need an explicit method for assigning shared inputs and impacts.
Shared burdens are divided according to the physical mass of the product streams.
Useful when mass reflects the relationship being studied, but oil and meal have different compositions and functions.Shared burdens are divided according to the relative economic value of oil, meal, and any included products.
Market values change over time and geography, so price period and source materially affect the result.Allocation can use energy content, protein, or another physical relationship appropriate to the study.
The selected property must match the function and be applied consistently across compared systems.The model can credit a product for displacing another product that would otherwise be produced.
The assumed displaced product, market response, substitution rate, and data source can strongly influence the outcome.Why it matters: two studies can begin with similar farms and plants yet report different product results because their functional units, boundaries, allocation methods, background data, or substitution assumptions differ.
Per hectare, tonne of seed, litre of oil, gram of protein, unit of energy, and prepared meal can produce different comparisons because they represent different functions.
Farm gate, crush-plant gate, retail shelf, kitchen, and end-of-use boundaries include different processes. A result is incomplete without its start and stop points.
Crushing creates both. Lifecycle work must explain how shared field and processing burdens are divided or how substitution is modelled.
Actual fuel, yield, distance, and electricity can enter a model alongside emission factors, background datasets, allocation choices, and scenarios.
Greenhouse gases, soil, water, nutrients, habitat, air, waste, economics, and human dimensions cannot always be collapsed into one score.
Lower, higher, improved, or reduced require a baseline, geography, period, unit, boundary, method, and uncertainty.
Use current methods and data rather than unsupported product rankings.