OPEN ACCESS
Allowing for significant water savings and year-round yields, controlled-Environment agriculture (cEa) is oftentimes portrayed as a sustainable alternative to conventional farming, and its practice in urban areas as a food, income and employment generator is expanding worldwide. particularly in today’s fast growing cities, where economic strength is buying food security through imports, a large- scale implementation of such practices should be further investigated as potential contributors – not only to food security but also to self-sufficiency – for the production of horticultural crops. however, further than quantifying the potential for food self-sufficiency of cities through urban cultivation, there is a crucial need for assessing the extent to which such scenarios are effectively more sustainable than existing supply chains. For that purpose, this paper presents the Urban Foodprints (UF) methodology, a fundamental preliminary step in the sustainability assessment of high-yield urban agriculture, consisting of collecting and integrating data on the existing supply chain, to be used as a baseline scenario in the environmental performance analysis. Through the case of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where harsh climatic conditions, a heavy reliance on food imports and a growing population constitute major threats to food security, the UF method is described and applied to the top four consumed horticultural crops – watermelon, tomato, onion and carrot. The environmental sustainability of high-yield urban agriculture in Riyadh is subsequently assessed for tomato, as a comparison of the resulting city’s current foodprint for the crop vs. a scenario of local production in cEa urban farms. Results show that urban production in high-yield greenhouses has the potential to reduce global Warming potential (gWp) by 9%. However, while water savings contribute greatly to reducing irrigation-related emissions and food miles are considerably reduced, the energy needs of the greenhouses are significantly higher than the baseline. This outcome may be improved by enhancing the envelope of the farms to reduce overheating.
baseline scenario, controlled-Environment Agriculture (CEA), sustainability assessment, urban foodprint, urban food system
[1] Benis, K. & Ferrão, P., Potential mitigation of the environmental impacts of food systems through Urban and Periurban Agriculture (UPA ) – A life cycle assessment approach. Journal of Cleaner Production, 140(2), pp. 784–795, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.05.176
[2] Notarnicola, B., Tassielli, G., Renzulli, P.A., 3Castellani, V. & Sala, S., Environmental impacts of food consumption in Europe. Journal of Cleaner Production, 140(2), pp. 753–765, 2017.
[3] Baker, L. & de Zeeuw, H., Urban food policies and programmes. In Cities and Agriculture: Developing Resilient Urban Food Systems, eds. H. de Zeeuw & P. Dreschel, Earthscan from Routledge, pp. 26–55, 2015.
[4] Grewal, S.S. & Grewal, P.S., Can cities become self-reliant in food? Cities, 29(1), pp. 1–11, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2011.06.003
[5] Haberman, D., Gillies, L., Canter, A., Rinner, V., Pancrazi, L. & Martellozzo, F., The potential of urban agriculture in Montreal: a quantitative assessment. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 3(3), pp. 1101–1117, 2014. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi3031101
[6] Thomson, A. & Metz, M., Implications of Economic Policy for Food Security: A Training Manual, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: Rome, 1998.
[7] Rome Declaration on World Food Security and World Summit Plan of Action, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, November 1996, Rome, Italy. http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/w3613e/w3613e00.HTM (accessed on 11 June, 2018).
[8] Mok, H.F., Williamson, V.G., Grove, J.R., Burry, K., Barker, S.F. & Hamilton, A.J., Strawberry fields forever? Urban agriculture in developed countries: A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 34(1), pp. 21–43, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-013-0156-7
[9] Astee, L.Y. & Kishnani, N.T., Building-Integrated Agriculture: Utilising rooftops for sustainable food crop cultivation in Singapore. Journal of Green Building, 5(2), pp. 105–113, 2010. https://doi.org/10.3992/jgb.5.2.105
[10] Orsini, F., Gasperi, D., Marchetti, L., Piovene, C., Draghetti, S., Ramazzotti, S., Bazzocchi, G. & Gianquito, G., Exploring the production capacity of rooftop gardens (RTG s) in urban agriculture: the potential impact on food and nutrition security, biodiversity and other ecosystem services in the city of Bologna. Food Security, 6(6), pp. 781–792,
2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-014-0389-6
[11] Benis, K., Reinhart, C. & Ferrão, P., Development of a simulation-based decision support workflow for the implementation of Building-Integrated Agriculture (BIA) in urban contexts. Journal of Cleaner Production, 147, pp. 589–602, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.01.130
[12] Kulak, M., Graves, A. & Chatterton, J., Reducing greenhouse gas emissions with urban agriculture: A life cycle assessment perspective. Landscape and urban planning, 111, pp. 68–78, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2012.11.007
[13] Theurl, M.C., Haberl, H., Erb, K.-H. & Lindenthal, T., Contrasted greenhouse gas emissions from local versus long-range tomato production. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 34(3), pp. 593–602, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-013-0171-8
[14] Goldstein, B., Birkved, M., Fernandez, J. & Hauschild, M., Surveying the environmental footprint of urban food consumption. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 21(1), pp. 151–165, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.12384
[15] Eigenbrod, C. & Gruda, N., Urban vegetable for food security in cities. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 35(2), pp. 483–498, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-014-0273-y
[16] Benis, K. & Ferrão, P., Commercial farming within the urban built environment – Taking stock of an evolving field in northern countries. Global Food Security, 17, pp. 30–37, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2018.03.005
[17] Despommier, D., The Vertical Farm: Feeding the world in the 21st century, Thomas Durne Books: New York, 2010.
[18] Al-Chalabi, M., Vertical farming: skyscraper sustainability? Sustainable Cities and Society, 18, pp. 74–77, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2015.06.003
[19] Sanyé–Mengual, E., Oliver-Solà, J., Montero, J.I. & Rierdevall, J., An environmental and economic life cycle assessment of rooftop greenhouse (RTG ) implementation in Barcelona, Spain. Assessing new forms of urban agriculture from the greenhouse structure to the final product level. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 20(3),
pp. 350–366, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-014-0836-9
[20] Goldstein, B., Hauschild, M., Fernandez, J. & Birkved, M., Testing the environmental performance of urban agriculture as a food supply in northern climates. Journal of Cleaner Production, 135, pp. 984–994, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.07.004
[21] Benis, K, Reinhart, C. & Ferrão, P., Building-Integrated Agriculture (BIA) in urban contexts: Testing a simulation-based decision support workflow. Proceedings of the 15th IBPSA Conference, pp. 1942–1951, 2017.
[22] Food and water security in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; Lovelle, M., Strategic Analysis Paper, Future Directions International, 28 July, 2015. http://www.futuredirections. org.au/publication/food-and-water-security-in-the-kingdom-of-saudi-arabia/ (accessed on 14 June, 2018).
[23] Saudi Arabia in World Population Ageing 1950–2050; United Nations, Population Division, DESA, pp. 402–403, 2016. http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/worldageing19502050/pdf/177saudi.pdf (accessed on 14 June, 2018).
[24] Fiaz, S., Noor, M.A. & Aldosri, F.O., Achieving food security in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through innovation: Potential role of agricultural extension. Journal of the Saudi Society of Agricultural Sciences, article in press, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jssas.2016.09.001
[25] Statistical Year Book for 2017; General Authority for Statistics. https://www.stats.gov.sa/en/930 (accessed on 4 July, 2018).
[26] Statistical Year Book for 2013; General Authority for Statistics. https://www.stats.gov.sa/en/46 (accessed on 15 June, 2018)..
[27] Irrigation in the Middle East region in figures, AQUASTAT Survey 2008, FAO , 2009. http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/i0936e/i0936e00.htm (accessed on 14 June, 2018).
[28] Agricultural statistics database of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UnitedNations, FAOSTAT , 2013. http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data (accessed on 15 June, 2018).
[29] Policy Options for Reducing Water for Agriculture in Saudi Arabia, KAPSARC, 2016. https://www.kapsarc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/KS-1630-DP024A-Policy-Options-for-Reducing-Water-for-Agriculture-in-SA.pdf (accessed on 15 June, 2018).
[30] Moradi, R., Moghaddam, P.R. & Mansoori, H., Energy use and economical analysis of seedy watermelon production for different irrigation systems in Iran. Energy Reports, 1, pp. 36–42, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2014.10.002
[31] El-Gafy, I., Water-food-energy nexus index: analysis of water-energy-food nexus of crop’s production system applying the indicators approach. Applied Water Science, 7(6), pp. 2857–2868, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13201-017-0551-3
[32] Mahmoud, M.A. & El-Baby, A.Z., Crop water requirements and irrigation efficiencies in Egypt. In The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2017.
[33] Allali, K., Dhehibi, B., Kassam, S. & Aw-Hassan, A.A., Energy consumption in onion and potato production within the Province of El Hajeb (Morocco): towards energy use efficiency in commercialized vegetable production. Journal of Agricultural Science, 9(1), pp. 118–127, 2017. https://doi.org/10.5539/jas.v9n1p118
[34] Daccache, A., Ciurana, J.S., Rodriguez Diaz, J.S. & Knox, J.W., Water and energy footprint of irrigated agriculture in the Mediterranean region. Environmental Research Letters, 9(12), p. 124014, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/9/12/124014
[35] Brander, M., Sood, A., Wylie, C., Haughton, A. & Lovell, J., Technical Paper: Electricity-specific emission factors for grid electricity, Econometrica, 2011. https://ecometrica. com/assets/Electricity-specific-emission-factors-for-grid-electricity.pdf (accessed on 15 June, 2018).
[36] Wang, J., Rothausen, S.G.S.A., Conway, D., Zhang, L., Xiong, W., Holman, I.P. & Li, Y., China’s water-energy nexus: greenhouse-gas emissions from groundwater use for agriculture. Environmental Research Letters, 7(1), p. 014035, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/7/1/014035