TY - JOUR
T1 - Sustainability assessment of peri-urban organic horticulture — A case study in the United Kingdom
AU - Ali, Mustafa
AU - Koh, Lenny
AU - Acquaye, Adolf
AU - Leake, Jonathan
AU - Nickles, Jacob
AU - Evans, Toby P.
AU - Roberts, Gareth
AU - Kemp, Douglas
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).
PY - 2024/3/1
Y1 - 2024/3/1
N2 - Purpose: There is a growing concern about the resilience and sustainability of horticultural production in the United Kingdom (UK) as a result of high energy costs and insufficient local labour, causing over-reliance on imports. In this study, we present an integrated environmental and economic assessment of organic peri-urban horticulture using primary data from a farm in Sheffield. Methods: This study includes a farm-to-gate hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) using the ReCIPE (H) approach for the functional unit of 1-kg tomatoes produced in an unheated polytunnel without supplementary lighting, and 1 kg of field-grown courgettes. All analyses were conducted in SimaPro software using environmental data from the ecoinvent database. Results were compared with those from a systematic literature review of similar studies. Results: We found that the production of organic tomatoes and courgettes resulted in a global warming potential (GWP) of 0.61 kg CO2-eq and 0.11 kg CO2-eq respectively using a process-based LCA approach. Using a hybrid LCA approach, however, yielded a GWP of 3.53 kg CO2-eq and 1.70 kg CO2-eq for the production of organic tomatoes and courgettes respectively. An additional scenario included farmgate-to-warehouse transportation for both domestic and imported produce from Spain, but found that the GWP of tomatoes in the case study was 1.87 times higher than those from Spain. Economic analysis showed that the marginal increase in the prices of tomatoes and courgettes from the case study farm was 4.6 and 5.15 times less than the market prices. Conclusion: We conclude that the studied production system is both economically and environmentally sustainable as compared to the existing scenario. Other potential benefits of peri-urban organic horticulture include employment, mental health, community cohesion, which remain to be explored in a future qualitative study. The present study is novel as it appears to be the first application of hybrid LCA to UK horticulture. The findings are highly topical given the recent horticultural supply constraints in the UK.
AB - Purpose: There is a growing concern about the resilience and sustainability of horticultural production in the United Kingdom (UK) as a result of high energy costs and insufficient local labour, causing over-reliance on imports. In this study, we present an integrated environmental and economic assessment of organic peri-urban horticulture using primary data from a farm in Sheffield. Methods: This study includes a farm-to-gate hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) using the ReCIPE (H) approach for the functional unit of 1-kg tomatoes produced in an unheated polytunnel without supplementary lighting, and 1 kg of field-grown courgettes. All analyses were conducted in SimaPro software using environmental data from the ecoinvent database. Results were compared with those from a systematic literature review of similar studies. Results: We found that the production of organic tomatoes and courgettes resulted in a global warming potential (GWP) of 0.61 kg CO2-eq and 0.11 kg CO2-eq respectively using a process-based LCA approach. Using a hybrid LCA approach, however, yielded a GWP of 3.53 kg CO2-eq and 1.70 kg CO2-eq for the production of organic tomatoes and courgettes respectively. An additional scenario included farmgate-to-warehouse transportation for both domestic and imported produce from Spain, but found that the GWP of tomatoes in the case study was 1.87 times higher than those from Spain. Economic analysis showed that the marginal increase in the prices of tomatoes and courgettes from the case study farm was 4.6 and 5.15 times less than the market prices. Conclusion: We conclude that the studied production system is both economically and environmentally sustainable as compared to the existing scenario. Other potential benefits of peri-urban organic horticulture include employment, mental health, community cohesion, which remain to be explored in a future qualitative study. The present study is novel as it appears to be the first application of hybrid LCA to UK horticulture. The findings are highly topical given the recent horticultural supply constraints in the UK.
KW - Affordability
KW - Food sustainability
KW - Hybrid LCA
KW - Resilience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85180202770&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/d50c3dd1-4545-35a3-856e-b7b6f7b42cab/
U2 - 10.1007/s11367-023-02260-z
DO - 10.1007/s11367-023-02260-z
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85180202770
SN - 0948-3349
VL - 29
SP - 456
EP - 468
JO - International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment
JF - International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment
IS - 3
ER -