A Life Cycle Assessment of integrated dairy farm-greenhouse systems in British Columbia

Zhang, Siduo; Bi, Xiaotao; Clift, Roland

doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2013.09.076

Cited by 29 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Studies most commonly highlight savings in transportation energy, reduced storage requirements at the wholesale/resale level, and energy inputs of food waste/loss along the supply chain, but also include additional biomass provision from silviculture (i.e. to offset energy imports; Smit and Nasr 1992), easier exploitation of resource use (Zhang et al 2013), and lower resource-intensity of production (Kulak et al 2013). Meanwhile, peri-urban agriculture can preserve higher-yielding prime agricultural land (Krannich 2006, Francis et al 2012, which has the potential to provide less resource-intensive production.…”

Section: Energy Benefits Of Urban Agriculturementioning

confidence: 99%

Considerations for reducing food system energy demand while scaling up urban agriculture

Mohareb

Heller

Novak

et al. 2017

Environ. Res. Lett.

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There is an increasing global interest in scaling up urban agriculture (UA) in its various forms, from private gardens to sophisticated commercial operations. Much of this interest is in the spirit of environmental protection, with reduced waste and transportation energy highlighted as some of the proposed benefits of UA; however, explicit consideration of energy and resource requirements needs to be made in order to realize these anticipated environmental benefits. A literature review is undertaken here to provide new insight into the energy implications of scaling up UA in cities in high-income countries, considering UA classification, direct/indirect energy pressures, and interactions with other components of the food-energy-water nexus. This is followed by an exploration of ways in which these cities can plan for the exploitation of waste flows for resource-efficient UA.Given that it is estimated that the food system contributes nearly 15% of total US energy demand, optimization of resource use in food production, distribution, consumption, and waste systems may have a significant energy impact. There are limited data available that quantify resource demand implications directly associated with UA systems, highlighting that the literature is not yet sufficiently robust to make universal claims on benefits. This letter explores energy demand from conventional resource inputs, various production systems, water/energy trade-offs, alternative irrigation, packaging materials, and transportation/supply chains to shed light on UA-focused research needs.By analyzing data and cases from the existing literature, we propose that gains in energy efficiency could be realized through the co-location of UA operations with waste streams (e.g. heat, CO 2 , greywater, wastewater, compost), potentially increasing yields and offsetting life cycle energy demands relative to conventional approaches. This begs a number of energy-focused UA research questions that explore the opportunities for integrating the variety of UA structures and technologies, so that they are better able to exploit these urban waste flows and achieve whole-system reductions in energy demand. Any planning approach to implement these must, as always, assess how context will influence the viability and value added from the promotion of UA.

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Section: Energy Benefits Of Urban Agriculturementioning

confidence: 99%

Considerations for reducing food system energy demand while scaling up urban agriculture

Mohareb

Heller

Novak

et al. 2017

Environ. Res. Lett.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These opportunities have also been modeled 398 to show how wastes can be used to provide bioenergy, such as using agricultural wastes for 399 greenhouse heating (Zhang et al, 2013) and incorporating wastewater treatment and land 400 remediation options to produce biomass in a cost effective way (Gopalakrishnan et al, 401 2009). In Ontario there is great potential for these approaches, as there are storm water 402 and wastewater ponds associated with greenhouses (Mann, 2012) and the region has many 403 food processing plants and farms producing animal waste.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle perspectives on the sustainability of Ontario greenhouse tomato production: Benchmarking and improvement opportunities

Dias

Ayer

Khosla

et al. 2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

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“…In most of the developed countries biogas technology is used to manage the pollutions of emission from fossil fuels in dairy farms more efficiently. This is one of the basic methods to control and decrease the GHG emission and it has an economic benefit [21,47]. Table 6.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The impacts of all of the effective environmental groups in dairy units of Denmark were less than Germany and Italy. In another study, carried out by Zhang et al [21] they examined the environmental impacts for dairy cow breeding units in Canada using LCA methodology based on an integrated system. The integrated system in the study was for applying an aerobically digested for production of biogas energy and digested slurry.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life Cycle Assessment modeling of milk production in Iran

Soltanali

Emadi

Rohani

et al. 2015

Information Processing in Agriculture

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Livestock units are known as one of the most influential sectors in the environment pollution.Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the environmental impacts of milk production in Guilan province of Iran through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The primary data were collected from 45 units of milk production through a field survey with the help of a structured questionnaire. The reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha coefficient and was estimated an acceptable value of 0.91. The consumption of resources and emissions were allocated to a Functional Unit (FU) of one ton of milk. Impacts of emissions in five impact categories of global warming, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical oxidation and depletion of resources were investigated. The results showed that the characterization index for these impact categories were 1831 kg CO 2 eq, 7.97 kg SO 2 eq, 3.42 kg PO 4 -3 eq, 0.21 kg C 2 H 4 eq and 838.39 MJ, respectively. Final indices for these impact categories were calculated as 0.24, 0.28, 0.076, 0.017 and 0.046, respectively. Environmental index (EcoX) and resources depletion index (RDI) were obtained 0.61 and 0.04, respectively. In this study, the highest potential for environmental impacts of production revealed for acidification and followed by global warming impact category.

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A Life Cycle Assessment of integrated dairy farm-greenhouse systems in British Columbia

Cited by 29 publications

References 8 publications

Considerations for reducing food system energy demand while scaling up urban agriculture

Considerations for reducing food system energy demand while scaling up urban agriculture

Life cycle perspectives on the sustainability of Ontario greenhouse tomato production: Benchmarking and improvement opportunities

Life Cycle Assessment modeling of milk production in Iran

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