Cleaner fruit production with green manure: The case of Brazilian melons

Abstract

Cleaner fruit production has become important for producers worldwide because consumers and retail companies increasingly base their purchase decisions on environmental criteria. Green manure is a soil management practice that promotes soil nutrient enrichment and may improve crop yield. Nonetheless, the environmental impacts and economic analysis of combined green manure and tropical fruit production have not been performed. This work assesses the environmental impacts and profits resulting from the Brazilian melon, commercialized in Brazil. Melon production is analyzed under two cultivation systems: i) the conventional form practiced by farmers located in the São Francisco Valley region, Brazil, and ii) the conservationist system, based on a green manure experiment carried out in this same region. This study applies life cycle assessment to evaluate the environmental impacts of both systems, considering farm inputs production and transportation (energy power, fertilizers, pesticides, plastic, paper, and fuel) as well as melon production and transportation to the main national distribution market in São Paulo. The impact categories evaluated are climate change, soil acidification, freshwater and marine eutrophication, water depletion, human toxicity (cancer and non-cancer), and ecotoxicity. Scenario analysis is applied to assess impacts under different designed conditions for transportation, packing, and nitrogen fertilization. The profit analysis is performed by reducing the total production costs (inputs and services) from the revenue obtained from selling melons. Results indicate that the conservationist system causes lower impacts and lead to higher profit than the conventional system, for all assessed categories. The scenario analysis confirms that impacts can be further reduced in all categories when alternative melon transportation and fertilization practices are adopted. This work demonstrates that the environmental performance of Brazilian melon production can be improved with the addition of green manure and alternative transportation practices.

Economic indicators of nitrogen fertilization in sunflower cultivars

“…In addition, the use of sunflower in crop rotation systems is already established practice, which reduces production costs and idleness of productive areas. The succession of crops in melon areas is a favorable practice, using residual fertilization of deeper layers and improving soil quality, considering that the production costs of one hectare of melon can be estimated at R$ 17,795.50 ha -1 and the cultivation of sunflower in the offseason will allow to cover part of the operational costs (SANTOS et al, 2018).…”

Pegadas hídrica e de carbono de produtos agrícolas: estudo da água de coco in natura

“…Observou-se também que a pegada de carbono da cultura do coco nas fazendas de referência, A, C e P, foi próxima ou menor que os valores apresentados por outros frutos irrigados (Tabela 3). Exceto na fazenda T, no qual o impacto na mudança climática foi superior aos da banana e abacaxi costa riquenhos (Svanes e Aronsson 2013; Ingwersen 2012), mirtilo e cereja chilenos (Cordes et al 2016;Bravo et al 2017) e melão e manga brasileiros (Santos et al 2018;Carneiro et al 2019). Já a pegada hídrica do coqueiro brasileiro, na categoria escassez hídrica foi superior aos impactos encontrados por Vázquez-Rowe et al (2017b) para a uva peruana e por Carneiro et al (2019)…”

Natural Organic Compounds for Application in Organic Farming

“…In general, most used green manure comes from legumes, although its exclusive use is not very advantageous because it provides a short period of supply of N due to its rapid decomposition (3-4 weeks), so it is not very suitable for application to crops that have a very long crop cycle [28]. In this sense, the effect of the use of green manure from legumes and non-legumes, independently and in combination, has been studied to improve the yield of various crops [27,[29][30][31]. In this way, the incorporation of green manure improves the chemical, biochemical, and microbiological characteristics of the soil [27,32].…”