In recent years, the horticultural sector has been confronted with questions about the carbon footprint of its products. However, the global standards used to calculate the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have some gaps that do not address the sector-specific issues for horticulture, such as crop rotation, land use of soil organic matter and the use of combined heat and power (CHP). The need for a sector-specific standard which addresses these interpretation gaps was identified. In response to this need, the 'Carbon footprinting of horticulture products protocol' (DNCF2009) was developed by the Dutch horticultural sector. The protocol is intended to follow the guidelines of PAS 2050 for the life cycle analysis of horticultural products; a lot of situations in greenhouse horticulture have to be described in so-called "Best Practices". In greenhouse cultures, energy consumption is the main component of the CO 2 emission. To save energy, many Dutch greenhouse companies use CHP to heat their greenhouses. These growers may sell the superfluous electricity produced by the CHP to the national grid, thereby generating two products; the horticultural product, e.g., a tomato and the electricity. The CO 2 emission of the electricity production should be deducted from the total CO 2 production of the CHP, in order to calculate the CO 2 emission that should be assigned to the production of the crop. To investigate the carbon footprint of organic crop production, an organic crop production system and a conventional crop production system are compared, and the effect on carbon emissions of a CHP system is studied for both production methods. An example for organically grown tomatoes is worked out. It shows the specific organic input factors and their impact on the CO 2 footprint. The functional unit used is kg CO 2 per 1000 kg product, and the system boundary is from seedling production until the delivery of product at the distribution center of wholesalers or supermarkets. The CO 2 footprint of the organic tomato crop grown without cogeneration is 10% higher than that of the conventional crop grown without cogeneration and more than double that of the conventional crop grown with CHP. The higher footprint compared with the footprint of conventional growing without CHP can be mainly explained by the lower yield of the organic crops. With CHP, the organic and conventional tomato crops have an equal CO 2 footprint. The use of CHP is a way to reduce the CO 2 footprint for both organic and conventional tomato growers.
This review paper discusses the program called Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), in North America, as an example of a subset of the care economy in which volunteers contribute to farm care. Human care is partly direct (some childcare, kitchen duties and other housework), but mostly indirect, in that farm families get time off. This review expands on previous work that considered farms in Ontario, Canada as spaces of care and farmwomen as the carers. It critiques other research that claims WWOOFers do not replace local labor and that WWOOF represents an idealistic and ethical space potentially corrupted by tourists.
As a starting point for future international cooperation in research on Organic Greenhouse Horticulture, an inventory was done to map the state of art of organic greenhouse horticulture worldwide. This inventory resulted in overview of national area sizes, characterisation of practised organic growing systems, regulations, and topics on the national research agenda for each country. The overview is presented and discussed in this paper. The emphasis in this overview is on the EU countries because that information was best available.
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