Elsevier

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 127, 20 July 2016, Pages 548-554
Journal of Cleaner Production

Cradle to farm gate life cycle assessment of strawberry production in the United States

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.03.175Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A “LCA Extended Enterprise Budget Tool v4.11” was developed to capture LCI data from enterprise budgets.

  • Production processes were created for farm machinery, chemicals and fertilizers processes missing in the LCI database.

  • Three sustainability metrics for strawberry production were developed in this study.

  • Global warming potential for strawberry production in four states varied from 1.75 to 5.48 kg CO2-eq per 1 kg of strawberry.

Abstract

The goal of this study was to develop a cradle to farm gate life cycle inventory and assess the environmental impacts of strawberry production in four major strawberry producing states of the United States: California, Florida, North Carolina and Oregon, representing 99% of the United States strawberry production. Life cycle environmental impacts depend strongly on geographic location and production practices. Data for California and North Carolina strawberry production were collected in collaboration with agricultural economists from those states using the “LCA Extended Enterprise Budget” Excel sheet (version 4.11). Data for Florida strawberry production were collected from the state's existing enterprise budget (a detailed accounting of production costs and returns which estimates profitability of an enterprise). Data related to Oregon strawberry production were obtained through interviews with strawberry producers. OpenLCA software was used to conduct life cycle assessment for strawberry production. Missing unit processes for production of agricultural machinery, pesticides, fertilizers and materials were modeled based on existing literature. In order to better assess the sustainability of strawberry production, three metrics encompassing nitrogen productivity, phosphorous productivity and fossil energy productivity were introduced. Global warming potential for California, Florida, North Carolina and Oregon strawberry production was estimated to be 1.75, 2.50, 5.48 and 2.21 kg CO2-eq per 1 kg of strawberry, respectively. The difference between LCA results was due to variation in yield and management practices which depend on geographic location. Plastics, fuels and fertilizers were the inputs with the highest contribution to environmental impact categories. California strawberry production scored the highest on three sustainability metrics mainly due to having the highest strawberry yield.

Introduction

The total value of the United States (U.S.) strawberry production in 2014 was $2.4 billion and surpassed that of the fresh apple industry for the first time in 2010 (AgMRC, 2013). Strawberries are the fourth most valuable fruit produced in the U.S. and the total production of strawberry has been reported by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as 1.4 million tonne in 2014 (USDA, 2015). Increasingly, producers, food retailers and consumers are becoming conscious of the environmental impacts of the products they produce, sell and/or consume. Therefore, assessing environmental impacts of strawberry production is essential to enable more sustainable production practices and to inform consumers of their choices. Communicating environmental impact information to stakeholders in an easy-to-understand format is critical for the move towards more sustainable production practices (Peano et al., 2015).

There are two main types of strawberry plants, distinguished by the date that they begin to produce fruit: June-bearing and day-neutral. June-bearing strawberries produce fruit in the late spring and early summer, while day-neutral strawberries produce their fruits continuously from early summer to fall (Demchak et al., 2010). In the U.S. strawberry transplants are used for strawberry production purposes and they mostly come from California nurseries. Strawberry transplants are produced from meristem plants after they are propagated under controlled conditions and numbers are increased up to three generations in nursery fields. Transplants are used to prevent transfer of diseases and pests to fruit production fields (Murthy et al., 2014). There are two main production systems for strawberries in the U.S.: matted-row and plasticulture. Matted-row production is an old and less expensive system in which strawberry plants are set out on cultivated lands at regularly spaced intervals within regularly spaced rows. This system allows strawberry runners to grow and establish daughter plants within the rows and it is also suitable for cooler regions. This system requires to be renovated each year. In the plasticulture system, strawberry plants are grown on raised beds covered with black plastic (plastic mulch). June-bearing and day-neutral strawberry plants can be cultivated under either system. The cultivated plants can be dormant plants or plug plants (plants grown from rooted runner tips) (Demchak et al., 2010). In recent years, plasticulture has become the main commercial growing system for strawberry production across most of the U.S. due to higher productivity and quality than the matted-row system (Fernandez et al., 2001, Poling, 2005).

A previous life cycle assessment (LCA) study for strawberry production in Italy indicated that most of the GHG emissions could be attributed to the plastics used in production (Girgenti et al., 2014). Similar studies were performed to assess life cycle impacts of strawberry production in Australia (Gunady et al., 2012), the United Kingdom (U.K.) and Spain (Williams et al., 2008). However, to date, there is no LCA for strawberry production in the U.S. to the best of our knowledge. This study represents the first LCA for strawberry production in the U.S. in multiple geographic locations. Life cycle environmental impacts depend strongly on geographic location and production practices. The main goal of this study was to perform LCA for strawberry production using the plasticulture method in four states across the U.S. A second goal of this paper was to propose simple producer/consumer friendly metrics that indicate the overall efficiency of nitrogen, phosphorous and fossil energy use during strawberry production.

Section snippets

Goal and scope definition

The primary goal of this study was to develop a cradle-to-farm-gate life cycle inventory (LCI) and assess the environmental impacts of the plasticulture method of non-organic strawberry production in four major strawberry producing states in the U.S.: California, Florida, North Carolina and Oregon. These four states produced 99% of strawberry in the U.S. from 2012 to 2014 (USDA, 2015). Obtaining high-quality LCI data is critical for a reliable LCA. Since such data do not as yet exist for

Results and discussion

Higher strawberry yields per ha generally corresponded to lower environmental impacts per kg of strawberry (Table 2). Strawberry yield and quality can be affected by day length, temperature, soil characteristics, altitude, latitude, cultivation system and management practices (Kruger et al., 2004) and the variation in strawberry yield among four states can be attributed to these factors. One of the most important factors was the climate (Palencia et al., 2013) which was totally different among

Conclusions

The use of modified enterprise budget sheets for collecting LCI data, while a worthy concept, was not very effective due to differences in production methods, which is reflected in differences in the format of enterprise budgets in different regions. Strawberry production varies greatly among geographic regions, and reliable LCAs for strawberry production can be performed only using datasets that are specific to a particular location. GWPs for strawberry production in California, Florida, North

Acknowledgments

This project was funded through a competitive grant to Oregon State University from the National Strawberry Sustainability Initiative (NSSI), University of Arkansas. The Walmart Foundation provides funds to the NSSI. The authors gratefully acknowledge the comments and critique provided by providers and reviewers of LCI data sets, collaborators at National Institute for Food and Agriculture and the USDA.

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