Life Cycle Assessment of Hay Versus Haylage in a Mediterranean Forage System: A Sicilian Case Study

Forage conservation is a strategic component of Mediterranean livestock systems, where seasonal drought, irregular rainfall, and high summer temperatures limit the availability of fresh forage. In these environments, hay and haylage are widely used as preservation strategies, yet their environmental performance remains insufficiently quantified under semi-arid conditions. It is hypothesized that the higher material and energy inputs required for haylage could be compensated for by the combined effects of biomass preservation efficiency and forage productivity, resulting in comparable or lower impacts per unit of conserved forage under Mediterranean farm conditions. To test this hypothesis, a life cycle assessment was conducted to compare hay and haylage production in a forage farm located in Sicily, Italy, considering the 2024–2025 season. The analysis adopted a cradle-to-farm-gate system boundary, and two complementary impact assessment methods, namely the CML-IA baseline method and the ReCiPe 2016 method, were applied. Environmental burdens were calculated per hectare of cultivated land and per ton of dry matter produced to capture both land-based and product-based performance. The choice of functional unit strongly influenced the interpretation of the environmental impact results. Per hectare, hay and haylage displayed comparable overall burdens, with haylage showing higher impacts in impact categories linked to plastic use and wrapping operations. Per ton of dry matter, however, haylage showed consistently lower impacts, attributed to greater biomass recovery and higher dry matter output, reflecting the combined effect of forage composition, crop productivity, and conservation efficiency. Hay systems showed greater burdens per unit of product under the evaluated farm conditions due to prolonged drying periods, repeated field operations, and higher biomass losses during harvesting and storage. The results suggest that, within the specific Mediterranean farm context analyzed, the combined effects of biomass preservation efficiency and crop productivity were important factors influencing environmental performance when impacts were expressed on an output basis. This case study contributes to current knowledge by identifying biomass recovery, rather than input minimization alone, as a key driver of sustainable forage conservation.