Background The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) is one of the seven scientific institutes of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC). In 2006, it published a report on the Environmental Impact of Products (EIPRO), which analysed the lifecycle environmental impacts related to consumption in the EU-25 countries. EIPRO found that “food and drink, tobacco and narcotics [are] responsible for 20-30% of the various environmental impacts of total consumption, and in the case of eutrophication for even more than 50%....” Meat and meat products were found to have the greatest environmental impact, accounting for 4-12% of all products’ impact on global warming. A follow-up IPTS report in 2008, ‘Improvement potential of meat and dairy products (IMPRO)’, conducted an in-depth analysis of the primary sector. It found that “the consumption of meat and dairy products contributes on average 24% of the environmental impacts from the total final consumption in EU-27, while constituting only 6% of the economic value”. The main improvement options – with an aggregated potential reduction of about 20% of environmental impacts – were identified in agricultural production, household food management and related to power savings. The implementation of Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) in the primary sector can be a key tool in guiding improvement options. Objectives The Agrolca-Manager project aimed to support agro-food companies in the primary sector, especially SMEs, to minimise the environmental impact of their products’ lifecycles. It aimed to make the companies more sustainable through improved management of the main environmental impacts, from their use of resources to the generation of waste. The project planned to provide specialised software to enable agro-industrial companies to conduct LCAs in their sector. It planned to improve and adapt a proven software tool, LCAmanager®, in line with specific legal and market conditions, the predominance of SMEs and the low levels of training in environmental assessment. The project would develop, test and validate the implementation of the tool in a winery and on farms producing sugar beet and vegetables. Knowledge of these industries would be incorporated into the tool to adapt it to their specific needs, and necessary information would be collected for LCA of the primary products. The process would identify and tackle any limitations of the tool and any gaps in required information. Finally, the project aimed to highlight areas of high environmental impact and suggest improvements. The goal was to produce a tool that can help primary sector companies measure, demonstrate and reduce their environmental impact, as well as improve their economic and social impact. It would support them in activities such as calculating their carbon footprint and obtaining ecolabels for marketing purposes. The project aimed to find an optimum balance between the usability of the tool in the sector and the accuracy and usefulness of the data provided, both for the management of environmental impacts and for eco-labelling. Expected results were: An eco-innovation software tool for LCA in the agro-food sector; Demonstration of environmental LCAs in a winery and on a farm; Identification of improvement actions for areas of high environmental impact; Reduced environmental impact of primary sector food producers.Results The project first gathered all relevant information about agro-industrial operations and practices commonly used by farmers, as well as the best available techniques (BATs) in the three target sectors studied: the vitivinicultural sector, the sugar beet sector and the horticultural sector. This information was assessed to identify the most relevant processes for LCA. The project then defined the calculation methodologies and the indicators to be included in the AGROLCA-Manager software tool. The basic structure and design of a prototype the software tool was then defined and created. The next step was to validate this tool, a process which entailed correcting mistakes in the calculations and improving weak points. The final version of the software tool meets the requirements and has implications for EU policy areas such as integrated production, sustainable use of pesticides and energy efficiency. The project demonstrated that farmers using the AGROLCA-Manager software tool can reduce the environmental impact of their activities. It is the first tool that calculates 15 sustainability indicators from the LCA approach, including: carbon footprint, water footprint –water stress and green, blue and grey water- CO2 emissions and flow, Energy, Phytosanitary –number of treatments and amount applied- and Ecotoxicity –freshwater, sea water, terrestrial- and human toxicity. The tool is also the first one that provides suggestions for reducing the environmental impact through the implementation of BATs – such as placing vegetal ground covers in vineyards to avoid soil erosion and save energy, and reducing the use of pesticides and fertilisers- and offers information about the legislation affecting these processes. In order to ensure the continued use of the tool, the beneficiary has designed the software tool to take account of the data usually recorded by the farmer in the regular farm registers. In compliance with the law on pesticides, every farmer must record the amount of pesticides used in each of his/her plots in a farm register (established by the regional government). The farm register also includes data on irrigation, fertilisation and sowing, though it is not mandatory to record this information. The project adapted the AGROLCA-Manager software tool accordingly, so that it is linked to the farm register. To increase its user friendliness, the tool was made available online. Furthermore, to further encourage the use of the tool, the project beneficiaries are promoting its use through the Emprendeverde Network, an initiative of the Biodiversity Foundation to encourage the creation and consolidation of companies or new lines of business activities related to environment, and channel investment into sustainable economic activities.