ISHS Acta Horticulturae 655: XV International Symposium on Horticultural Economics and Management
INTEGRATED EVALUATION OF GREENHOUSE VEGETABLE PRODUCTION: TOWARD SUSTAINABLE MANAGEMENT |
| Authors: | K. Hayashi, H. Kawashima |
| Keywords: | Environmental indicators, multicriteria analysis, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), tomato, drip fertigation |
| Abstract:
This paper describes the applicability of integrated evaluation methodologies to the impact assessment of management practices for greenhouse vegetable production. Tomato cultivation in plastic greenhouses is analyzed as an example. In order to provide new insights into methodological frameworks by consistently classifying existing methodologies, we compare three categories of integration methods, which consist of immediate application of multicriteria analysis, environmental themes approaches to life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), and damage-oriented approaches to LCIA. On the basis of the discussion about the methodologies, we assess the environmental impacts of two alternative greenhouse tomato production systems, the conventional system and the drip fertigation system, by damage-oriented approaches. Our primary concern in the analysis is related to the application of fertilizer nitrogen and pesticides and thus two system boundaries are defined: One includes production processes for fertilizers and pesticides and the other excludes the production processes. Two functional units, 1 ha and 1 kg fruit, are used because both units are equally useful in assessing the environmental impacts of the practices. The results show that the drip fertigation system reduces the direct environmental impacts on human health and ecosystem quality and that attention has to be paid to the impacts of fertilizer production and pesticide application on ecosystem quality irrespective of functional units. | |
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