A Review of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) Vegetable Production in Africa with Emphasis on Tomatoes, Onions and Cabbage

Abstract

This chapter reviews the available information about performance indicators for controlled environment agriculture (CEA) and conventional production systems in Africa with an emphasis on those arising from tomatoes, onions and cabbage production. We identified a small number of studies that reported, yields per land area, costs, cumulative energy demand (CED), global warming potential (GWP) and water use for either CEA or field-based production systems. The available information does not allow robust comparisons of CEA and field-based production for any of these indicators, which suggests the need for expanded and improved crop-specific data collection from existing operations and the usefulness of alternative approaches such as economic engineering.