High environmental risk and low yield of urban tomato gardens in Benin

Perrin, Aurélie; Basset-Mens, Claudine; Huat, Joël; Yehouessi, Wilfried

doi:10.1007/s13593-014-0241-6

Cited by 17 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Vertical farms (or "plant factories") continue to proliferate with examples in South Korean (Suwon Farm), the Netherlands (PlantLab), and the USA (Green Spirit Farms) (Marks 2014), though it remains unknown whether the increased yields offset the potentially high capital and energy requirements of these systems. At the other end of the spectrum, low-tech UA systems in sub-Saharan Africa had poor practices and profligate pesticide usage well above recommended rates, leading to yields below conventional supply chains and increased public health risks (Perrin et al 2015).…”

Section: Supply Chain Efficienciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban versus conventional agriculture, taxonomy of resource profiles: a review

Goldstein

Hauschild

Fernández

et al. 2016

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

138

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Urban agriculture appears to be a means to combat the environmental pressure of increasing urbanization and food demand. However, there is hitherto limited knowledge of the efficiency and scaling up of practices of urban farming. Here, we review the claims on urban agriculture's comparative performance relative to conventional food production. Our main findings are as follows: (1) benefits, such as reduced embodied greenhouse gases, urban heat island reduction, and storm water mitigation, have strong support in current literature. (2) Other benefits such as food waste minimization and ecological footprint reduction require further exploration. (3) Urban agriculture benefits to both food supply chains and urban ecosystems vary considerably with system type. To facilitate the comparison of urban agriculture systems we propose a classification based on (1) conditioning of the growing space and (2) the level of integration with buildings. Lastly, we compare the predicted environmental performance of the four main types of urban agriculture that arise through the application of the taxonomy. The findings show how taxonomy can aid future research on the intersection of urban food production and the larger material and energy regimes of cities (the "urban metabolism").

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Section: Supply Chain Efficienciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban versus conventional agriculture, taxonomy of resource profiles: a review

Goldstein

Hauschild

Fernández

et al. 2016

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

138

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Little is known about the environmental impacts of protected horticulture in SSA, and especially about the low-cost protected cultivation techniques for smallholders analyzed in this paper. First global environmental assessments using life cycle assessment (LCA) have confirmed the high potential impacts of urban garden vegetables in Africa with a case study of tomato production in southern Benin { (Perrin et al 2015;Perrin et al 2017) but low-cost protected cultivation techniques such as insect-proof nets have never been assessed using such a global and multi-criteria assessment tool. Like open-field vegetable cropping systems, protected vegetable cropping systems use fertilizers, pesticides, energy and water.…”

Section: Environmental Impacts Of Protected Cultivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protected cultivation of vegetable crops in sub-Saharan Africa: limits and prospects for smallholders. A review

Nordey

Basset-Mens

Bon

et al. 2017

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

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Vegetable production in sub-Saharan Africa faces numerous agronomic constraints that will have to be overcome to feed the increasing population and to fight malnutrition. Technology transfer and the adoption of low-tech protected cultivation techniques affordable for smallholders are believed to be able to meet this challenge. Protected cultivation techniques are a set of agricultural practices aimed at artificializing the crop environment through the use of soil covers and/or plant covers to control pests and climatic conditions. Although protected cultivation techniques may increase the yield and quality of vegetable crops and extend their production periods worldwide, the transfer of these techniques in sub-Saharan Africa raises questions about their agronomical performances, their profitability but also their environmental impacts. Are low-tech protected cultivation techniques adapted to the sustainable production of vegetables by smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa? To answer this question, we present an overview of the agronomic, economic, and environmental performances of low-tech protected cultivation techniques in sub-Saharan Africa as reported in the literature. The major conclusions that can be drawn from the review are (1) low-tech protected cultivation techniques are not suitable in all climatic conditions in sub-Saharan Africa and need to be combined with other methods to ensure adequate pest control, (2) the profitability of protected cultivation techniques relies on the capacity to offset increased production costs by higher yields and higher selling prices to be obtained with off-season and/or higher quality products, (3) breaking with existing cropping systems, the lack of technical support and skills, and the limited access to investment funding are major obstacles to the adoption of protected cultivation techniques by smallholders (4) life cycle assessments conducted in northern countries suggested that more efficient use of agricultural inputs would offset the negative impacts of protected cultivation techniques if they are properly managed, but further studies are required to be sure these results can be extrapolated to sub-Saharan Africa context. (Résumé d'auteur

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“…For our food system to become more sustainable, we must better understand externalities, the desired and undesired effects, trade-offs, and the unknowns. For example, certain gardening practices can have negative or unknown ecological effects (i.e., groundwater pollution, nutrient loading, and greenhouse gas emissions; Perrin et al, 2015;O'Riordan et al, 2021) and exposure to contaminants remains a widespread concern in urban environments-a risk that can be compounded by systemic inequities and warrants further study.…”

Section: Supporting and Regulating Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%