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LCA of local and imported tomato: an energy and water trade-off
Sandra Payen
a
,
b
,
*
, Claudine Basset-Mens
b
, Sylvain Perret
c
a
ADEME, (Agence de l'Environnement et de la Maîtrise de l'Energie), 20 avenue du Gr
esill
eeBP 90406, 49004 Angers, France
b
CIRAD, UPR Hortsys, ELSA, 34398 Montpellier, France
c
CIRAD, UMR G-Eau, 34398 Montpellier, France
article info
Article history:
Received 14 January 2014
Received in revised form
1 October 2014
Accepted 5 October 2014
Available online xxx
Keywords:
Environmental impacts
LCA
Water deprivation
Off-season tomato
France
Morocco
abstract
The environmental impact of imported fresh agricultural products, such as off-season vegetables
transported over long distances, is under growing scrutiny. We hypothesised that the environmental Life
Cycle Assessment (LCA) ranking between local and imported vegetables might change depending on the
impact category considered. We focused on the case study of off-season tomatoes produced in Morocco
under unheated greenhouses in a water-scarce area, which covers 68% of the fresh tomatoes imported to
France. First, we performed a cradle-to-market gate LCA of the Moroccan production using primary data
based on a field survey. Second, we applied the same Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) method to
published cradle-to-farm-gate results of the French tomato cropping system, which also provides off-
season tomatoes to the French market and which is characterised by heated greenhouses with a high
level of inputs. In addition to typical environmental impact categories, the freshwater use impact was
included. The ranking between imported and local tomatoes was different depending on the impact
category. Freshwater use had greater impacts under the Moroccan arid climate: 28.0 L H
2
O
eq
kg
1
of
Moroccan tomato and 7.5 L H
2
O
eq
kg
1
of French tomato. Conversely, the higher level of artificialisation
of the French production resulted in greater impacts on total energy consumption, global warming, and
eutrophication, even including transport to France for the Moroccan tomato. This reveals a trade-off
between freshwater use impacts and the usual/other impacts, mostly energy-related. At the farm gate,
we found that the Moroccan tomato water consumption highly contributed to the total damages to
Human Health (14%), and Ecosystems (20%) (contribution to Resources depletion was only 2%). Therefore,
ignoring the impacts of freshwater use in LCA also underestimates the damages. Moreover, we showed
that the assessment of freshwater use impacts and damages still has shortcomings, leading to an un-
derestimation of the impact for the Moroccan tomato case. These results emphasised the importance of
considering all of the impact categories when performing an agricultural LCA and the need for a more
comprehensive method for assessing the impacts of freshwater use. In particular, the use of an opera-
tional tool for estimating water and solute fluxes at the field level is recommended to feed freshwater
impact assessment methods.
©2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
In Northern developed countries, the consumption of fresh
agricultural products is currently regular and diversified
throughout the year (Freshfel, 2012). In Europe, to meet consumers'
year-round demand for fresh vegetables, off-season fresh products
are either imported or produced in artificialised cropping systems,
such as heated greenhouses. In this context, the environmental
impacts attached to the year-round supply of fresh vegetables are
receiving increasing attention (Sim et al., 2007; Webb et al., 2013).
This is particularly important when imported vegetables are water-
demanding crops grown in water-scarce areas.
The case of fresh tomatoes marketed in France in winter is a
typical illustration of these issues. The tomato is the most
consumed fresh vegetable in France, and its production requires
much water. Off-season tomatoes are either produced locally in
heated greenhouses or imported from Morocco and Spain. Morocco
(North Africa) is the primary supplier of the French market, with
68% of the imported off-season tomatoes (French customs); pro-
duction for export is located in the Souss-Massa region (West
*Corresponding author. ADEME, (Agence de l'Environnement et de la Maîtrise de
l'Energie), 20 avenue du Gr
esill
eeBP 90406, 49004 Angers, France. Tel.: þ33(0)4
67 61 59 24.
E-mail addresses: payen.sandra@gmail.com,sandra.payen@cirad.fr (S. Payen).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Cleaner Production
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.007
0959-6526/©2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e10
Please cite this article in press as: Payen, S., et al., LCA of local and imported tomato: an energy and water trade-off, Journal of Cleaner Production
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.007
Southern Morocco). This region has a favourable warm climate for
off-season production, but water scarcity is a major natural
constraint because of low annual precipitation and high evapora-
tion (Bouchaou et al., 2008). In such an arid climate, the assessment
of water use efficiency and impacts of agricultural systems is
paramount. However, to our knowledge, the environmental im-
pacts of Moroccan tomato production system for export have never
been assessed.
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a standardised (ISO, 2006a,
2006b) multicriteria decision support tool for the environmental
assessment of products. LCA was chosen by the French govern-
ment as the reference method for the environmental labelling of
food products as part of the Grenelle law 2 (Cros et al., 2010).
Nevertheless, the LCA methodology still has shortcomings for the
modelling of freshwater use impacts (Kounina et al., 2013). These
shortcomings are of particular concern when evaluating irrigated
agricultural systems, knowing that 70% of all water extraction
worldwide is destined for agricultural use (World Water
Assessment Program, 2009). Life-cycle impact assessment of
water consumption has evolved rapidly over the past five years,
with many new methods improving the completeness of pathway
coverage (Tendall et al., 2013), but it has not yet resulted in a
single consensus method. The UNEP-SETAC Life Cycle Initiative
established an international working group called Water Use in
LCA (WULCA) to evaluate the latest methodological developments
and make recommendations to fill this gap (Bayart et al., 2010;
Kounina et al., 2013). There are several reviews on LCA methods
for the modelling of freshwater use impacts (Berger and
Finkbeiner, 2012, 2010; Jeswani and Azapagic, 2011; Kounina
et al., 2013). The most commonly applied method is that from
Pfister et al. (2009), who proposed the first operational approach
for assessing the impacts of freshwater consumption accounting
for local freshwater scarcity.
Recent research has shown that the impacts of water use for
vegetable production are crucial in the choice of vegetable sourc-
ing. Stoessel et al. (2012) studied a wide range of vegetables,
including tomato, and concluded that, from a carbon footprint
viewpoint, it is often better to import vegetables produced in warm
Southern countries during periods when Northern production re-
quires heating. However, from a water perspective, sourcing veg-
etables from water-scarce Southern countries is questionable. Page
et al. (2011) studied the tomatoes supplied to the Sydney market
and also highlighted a trade-off between carbon and water foot-
prints between different tomato production sites in Australia.
However, such studies are not multicriterion LCA studies because
they only focus on carbon and water footprints. Recent LCA studies
have investigated the environmental impacts of French, Italian and
Spanish tomato production, surprisingly without considering the
impacts of freshwater use (Anton et al., 2005; Boulard et al., 2011;
Cellura et al., 2012; Martínez-Blanco et al., 2011; Torrellas et al.,
2012). In their recent comparison of locally produced tomatoes in
the UK and imported tomatoes from Spain, Webb and colleagues
(2013) also did not address the impacts of freshwater use.
The aim of our study was to answer the following question: does
the inclusion of the impacts of freshwater use make a difference in
the environmental evaluation of off-season vegetables either pro-
duced locally or imported from warm Southern countries? We
addressed this question through a typical case study: the Moroccan
tomato supplying the French market. Therefore, we performed a
complete LCA including freshwater deprivation and identified the
environmental hot-spots of off-season tomato production in
Morocco and delivery to the French market in winter. We then
compared these results with local French off-season tomatoes,
already studied by Boulard et al. (2011), on a range of environ-
mental impact categories, including freshwater deprivation. We
lastly assessed the methodological limitations of the evaluation of
freshwater use in LCA.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Geographical context
In Morocco, tomato production for export to Europe is highly
standardised, and 85% of the total tomatoes for export are produced
in West Southern Morocco, in the Souss-Massa region (Lacombe,
2010). This alluvial basin produces more than half of Morocco's
exported citrus and vegetables (Bouchaou et al., 2008). These crops
consume large amounts of water. The Souss-Massa is characterised
by a semi-arid climate: a low average rainfall (250 mm year
1
), a
high potential evaporation (>2000 mm year
1
) and average daily
temperatures ranging from 19
C in winter to 27
C in summer
(Bouchaou et al., 2008). The over-exploitation of groundwater for
irrigation has led to the depletion of groundwater resources and the
degradation of their quality. Current and future water supplies are
threatened by the groundwater level decline and the large variation
in salinity of groundwater and surface water (Bouchaou et al.,
2008).
2.2. LCA goal and scope
With the goal of producing a complete LCA for the Moroccan
export tomato for the French market, we defined the functional
unit as 1 kg of fresh bulk tomato delivered at the Saint-Charles
International Market entry gateway (French distribution hub for
fruits and vegetables). The system boundaries (Fig. 1) were from
cradle to market (i.e., from raw material extraction to the market
entrance gate) and included all direct inputs for seedling produc-
tion, greenhouse manufacture, tomato production, packaging and
transportation to the French market, but excluded capital items
other than greenhouses.
Primary data refer to three annual crop cycles
(2009e2010e2011) and were collected during in-depth field sur-
veys in one seedling nursery, three farms, and one packaging sta-
tion, all located in the Souss-Massa region. We used primary data
for the consumption of agricultural inputs (fertilisers, pesticides),
water, electricity and fuels, the amount of materials (greenhouse
components, packaging components …), the use of agricultural
machineries, the amount of final products for the nursery, the to-
mato cultivation and the packaging stages. Table 1 shows key farm
inventory data provided by the producers. Secondary data such as
input transportation and manufacturing, fuel consumption for
truck refrigeration and freight ship container, were obtained from
the literature and from the Ecoinvent 2.2 database (Frischknecht
et al., 2007) referring to the average European context. Indeed,
packaging, fertilisers, pesticides and most of the greenhouse com-
ponents are manufactured in Europe. Transport mode and distance
of farm inputs were adjusted according to the origin. Primary data
set is of high quality and secondary datasets are of basic quality
when self-evaluated following the data quality assessment of ILCD
(JRC-IES, 2010) (Detailed analysis in table A2a and A2b in
Supplementary data). The LCA modelling was performed with
Simapro 7.3.2 software (PR
e Consultants, 2011).
In the case of co-product generation at the farm gate, including
grade-out tomatoes provided to the Moroccan local market, a
physical allocation was used (according to their mass). An economic
allocation was not possible due to insufficient time series data for
price. Conversely, an economic allocation at the nursery gate was
used thanks to sufficient seedling price data. The energy (fuel and
electricity) and water consumption of the packaging station were
allocated to tomato using a physical approach.
S. Payen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e102
Please cite this article in press as: Payen, S., et al., LCA of local and imported tomato: an energy and water trade-off, Journal of Cleaner Production
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.007
2.3. Inventory of Moroccan tomato production: from cradle-to-
farm-gate
2.3.1. Nursery and tomato cultivation
Tomato production is based on grafted plants, which are resis-
tant to soil-borne diseases. The grafted tomato plants are produced
during summer period in highly artificialised nurseries, with air-
conditioning and moisture control systems, located a few kilo-
metres from the tomato farms. After replanting, the tomato crop
grows in non-heated greenhouses, in natural soil, with a drip fer-
tigation system. The greenhouses are of the “Canarian”type,
a multi-span greenhouse with a wood or metal frame covered with
transparent polyethylene plastic. The crop cycle is about nine
months, with planting from August to September and harvesting
from October to May. There is no crop rotation. Average yield of the
studied farm was 208 ton ha
1
(Table 1), this is within the range of
reported yield by other producers in the area and seedling com-
panies (Grasselly D. Personal communication) and in the north of
Spain, unheated greenhouse tomato production yields reach also
200 ton ha
1
(Munoz et al., 2008). However, this yield is higher
than the tomato grown in Almeria in the south of Spain (Soto et al.,
2014; Thompson et al., 2007; Torrellas et al., 2012) probably due to
less favourable climate in Almeria. After harvesting, tomatoes are
packed in cardboard boxes and transported to France by boat or
truck. Moroccan tomatoes are exported during winter; during
summer, the tariff protection enforced by the European Union is
prohibitive. Farmers estimate the water irrigation requirements
through the calculation of the potential evapotranspiration of the
crop. The farms are part of a 18,050-ha irrigation scheme; on
average, over the three cropping seasons, 50% of the irrigation
water came from the Youssef Ben Tachfine dam and 50% from the
aquifer through wells. Fertilisation is based on local agricultural
institution recommendations for each crop growing stage, adjusted
according to soil analysis and the farmer's expertise. Because drip
fertigation is used, we collected water and fertiliser amounts on a
daily basis, from farmers' practices and records.
Because the soil is covered with polyethylene plastic mulch, no
herbicide is used. Crop protection management is based upon pest
monitoring, except for the systematic soil treatment against nem-
atodes before planting. Fifty-nine active ingredients of pesticides
were included in the study; overall, 96.5% in total weight of pesti-
cides applied were characterised.
Fig. 1. Flow diagram for the Moroccan off-season tomato production and delivery to the French market (2009e2011, Souss-Massa region, Southern Morocco).
Table 1
Key inventory data for the Moroccan and French tomato cropping systems.
Parameter Unit This study 3 farms
average [min; max]
Boulard et al., 2011
(bulk tomato)
Reporting period 2009 to 2011 2006 to 2008
Country
(production site)
Morocco France
Growing period WintereSpring WintereSpring
Greenhouse
structure
Canarian plastic
greenhouse
Glass or plastic
greenhouse
Substrate Soil Rockwool
Greenhouse
heating
No Yes
CO
2
enrichment No Yes
Yield ton ha
1
208 [180; 234] 450
Fertilisation kg N ha
1
657 [473; 968] 2561
kg P
2
O
5
ha
1
483 [311; 776] 1401
kg K
2
Oha
1
1742 [1285; 2458] 5378
Irrigation water m
3
ha
1
5591 [4430; 6296] 12,500
Energy
consumption
kWh ha
1
26,751 [18,414;
42,840]
2,965,000
S. Payen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e10 3
Please cite this article in press as: Payen, S., et al., LCA of local and imported tomato: an energy and water trade-off, Journal of Cleaner Production
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.007
Regarding energy consumption, the farms use diesel and elec-
tricity for fertigation and pesticide treatments. Pumps are used for
water extraction from wells, for water and fertilisers mixing and
pressurisation in the drip irrigation system. Pesticides are applied
using motor-pump units or connection with the fertigation system.
Energy consumption was calculated based on the pumps' specifi-
cations and their operating time.
The electricity mix of Morocco of 2007 was used. Regarding the
end-of-life treatment, as in Morocco the wastes have at least a
second life, we considered that all equipment was re-used by other
systems, resulting in no environmental cost for our system. Indeed,
local small producers re-use mulch plastics, greenhouse plastics
and metals, and goat farmers recover the crop residues and
damaged fruit to feed their herds. However, after several uses, the
materials are landfilled in a wasteland and finally burned. We
tested a waste incineration scenario in the sensitivity analysis
(Table A3).
2.3.2. Field emissions
Nitrogen oxides, phosphates and pesticides emissions were
calculated according to Nemecek and K€
agi (2007), nitrous oxide
according to IPCC (Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas
Inventories) (2006), and ammonia emissions were based on
emission factors for group I from ECETOC (European Centre for
Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals) (1994). Phosphorus
emissions through water erosion were not considered because the
topography is flat and the crop was greenhouse covered. Nitrate
leaching was considered nil because the daily irrigation volume
was below the soil field capacity. The field capacity calculation was
based on the ISRIC-WISE global data set of derived soil properties
(Batjes, 2006). A more conservative method was also adopted
assuming a nitrate leaching of 20% of N-fertiliser (like in Boulard
et al. (2011) for soil-systems, presented by Perrin et al. (2014).Re-
sults are shown in the sensitivity analysis. The pesticides were
assumed to be emitted to the soil (Nemecek and K€
agi, 2007).
Temporary biogenic carbon fixation in biomass was not accounted
for since its inclusion has no implication on the results due to no
characterisation factor associated. This is in line with practices from
the literature on tomato (Boulard et al., 2011; Cellura et al., 2012).
Inventory of post-farm production stages.
Data related to packaging were collected from a packaging
station located near the farms. Tomatoes are washed, sorted ac-
cording to size and colour, packed in cardboard boxes, palletised,
and stored in cold rooms before transport. Export tomatoes to
France take two possible routes: by ship from the port of Agadir
(Morocco) to Port-Vendres (France), including truck drives to and
from the ports, or by truck from the Moroccan packaging station to
the Saint-Charles market in France, which is 50 km from Port-
Vendres, through Spain. In a 38- to 44-ton refrigerated truck, 24
tons of packed tomatoes can be loaded. The fuel consumption for
traction and refrigeration for this vehicle was taken from Tassou
et al. (2009). With the sea route, the products are transported by
freight ship, in forty-foot refrigerated containers. The fuel con-
sumption for ship propulsion and for container cooling was based
on reports from the International Maritime Organisation (Buhaug
et al., 2009) and Wild et al. (1999, 2005). The reference scenario
assessed was 67% truck and 33% ship, based on exporters' records.
2.4. Life cycle impact and damage assessment
The impact assessment phase was performed using the ReCiPe
life cycle impact assessment method (Goedkoop et al., 2009),
adopting the Hierarchist perspective. The following environmental
impact categories were considered: climate change (100 years;
kg CO
2eq
); terrestrial acidification (g SO
2eq
); freshwater and marine
eutrophication (g P
eq
and g N
eq
respectively, based on the nutrient-
limiting factor of the aquatic environment); terrestrial, freshwater,
and marine ecotoxicity (g 1,4-DB
eq
: 1,4-dichlorobenzene); agricul-
tural land occupation (m
2
year); metal and fossil depletion (g Fe
eq
and kg oil
eq
). The non-renewable energy consumption (fossil and
nuclear; MJ
eq
) was assessed using the Cumulative Energy Demand
method (Frischknecht, 2007).
In addition, the impacts of freshwater consumption were
assessed with the method of Pfister et al. (2009) compatible with
ReCiPe (Pfister et al., 2011b). The calculation of freshwater depri-
vation is based upon the inventory of consumed water flows. This
includes water flows from the aquifer and the dam intothe farming
system for irrigation and agrochemical preparation, and the water
use associated with background processes (e.g., farm inputs,
manufacturing and transport). Irrigation water was assumed to be
fully consumed. Water consumption of the background processes
was quantified using the Ecoinvent 2.2 database (Frischknecht
et al., 2007) and represented only 13% of the total water
consumed from cradle to farm gate. Adopting a conservative
approach, this water was considered as consumed. The mid-point
freshwater deprivation (L H
2
O
eq
) is calculated through the multi-
plication of each instance of consumptive water use by the relevant
water stress index (WSI) and then summed across the life cycle
(Pfister et al., 2009). The WSI reflects the local freshwater scarcity
and is based on a water withdrawal-to-availability ratio calculated
with the Water GAP 2 model. The WSI of the Souss-Massa region is
1, meaning that all of the water consumed potentially contributes to
freshwater deprivation. The water consumed during background
processes (e.g., inputs and manufacture) was weighted with the
global average WSI (0.669).
We then explored the aggregation of impacts into damages and
analysed the contribution of freshwater deprivation to these
damages. Thus, we calculated end-point damages to the three areas
of protection: Human Health, Ecosystems, and resources, using
ReCiPe and Pfister et al. (2009) end-point assessment. The damage
factors for the Souss-Massa area were as follows: 2.79E-
06 DALY m
3
for Human Health, 2.77E-08 species year m
3
for
Ecosystems and 0.895 $ m
3
for Resources. Water consumed during
background processes was assigned the global average damage
factor for each process.
Scenario analyses were performed to test the robustness of our
results. We modelled the incineration of all wastes (greenhouse
and nursery materials) instead of the re-use modelled in the
reference scenario; we modelled a full truck load (24 tons of to-
mato) instead of the Ecoinvent default average load (11.68 tons); we
modelled an economic allocation instead of a physical allocation, at
both farm and packaging stages (7.5 Dirham per kg of exported
tomato and 2.5 Dirham per kg of locally sold tomato and the few
other vegetables); we modelled a truck modernisation (from EURO
3 to EURO 4) for the tomatoes exportation to France; and we
modelled different shares of means of transportation (100% ship
route or 100% truck route). Relevant outcomes of these analyses
will be mentioned in the results section. See Table A3 in
Supplementary data for details.
2.5. LCA comparison of Moroccan and French off-season tomato
production
We compared our cradle-to-farm-gate Moroccan results with
the cradle-to-farm-gate LCA results obtained by Boulard et al.
(2011) for French off-season tomato production. Boulard et al.
(2011) defined typical cropping systems for each region of pro-
duction, based on data and on the expertise of French technical
extension services. The French off-season tomato crop grows dur-
ing winter under soil-less conditions in heated glass or plastic
S. Payen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e104
Please cite this article in press as: Payen, S., et al., LCA of local and imported tomato: an energy and water trade-off, Journal of Cleaner Production
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.007
greenhouses in north-western and south-eastern France and re-
quires high levels of inputs (Table 1).
Boulard and colleagues gave us access to their data set and
permission to recalculate the life cycle impact assessment results
with the same method we applied to Moroccan production (ReCiPe
including Pfister et al. (2009), at both mid-point and end-point
levels).
The impact categories included for the comparison were as
follows: climate change (100 years), non-renewable energy con-
sumption (fossil and nuclear), marine and freshwater eutrophica-
tion, terrestrial acidification, and water deprivation (Pfister et al.,
2009). We calculated the water deprivation impact by multi-
plying the volume of water consumed (adopting a conservative
approach, all water was considered consumed) with the average
Water Stress Index (WSI) for France (0.181) because it was not
possible to precisely locate the tomato cropping systems in France.
The French off-season tomato cropping systems do not consume
precipitation water. The ecotoxicity data could not be recovered
from Boulard et al. (2011) because they were calculated indepen-
dently and with a specific method.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Environmental impacts of the Moroccan off-season tomato
production and delivery
Over the entire tomato life cycle, the tomato cultivation stage
was the main contributor to the freshwater eutrophication, eco-
toxicity, metal depletion and freshwater deprivation impact cate-
gories, whereas the tomato packaging stage had the largest
contribution to agricultural land occupation (Table 2). Transport
from Morocco to France was the main contributor to climate
change, terrestrial acidification, marine eutrophication and fossil
depletion (Table 2). The contribution of seedling production was
small for all impact categories (less than 4%).
3.1.1. Climate change
Transport to France was the main contributor to climate change,
responsible for 44% of the impact of tomatoes delivered to the
French market (Table 2). This was mainly due to CO
2
emissions from
trucks. The tomato cultivation contributed 37% to climate change
impact, mainly due to CO
2
emissions occurring during the manu-
facture of greenhouse components and to electricity consumption
for fertigation (Fig. 2). Tomato cardboard packaging contributed
17% ( Table 2). The scenario analysis showed that climate change
impacts were sensitive to the transport route and truck load.
Indeed, tomato being entirely exported by freight ship reduced the
climate change impact by about a quarter, whereas transport
exclusively by truck entailed a 13% increase. Modelling the trucks as
full (24 tons of tomato) reduced the impacts by 18% (Tab. A3).
3.1.2. Non-renewable energy use
Transport to France contributed 39% to the total non-renewable
energy consumption, tomato cultivation (fertigation and green-
house manufacture) 34% and packaging 23%.
3.1.3. Terrestrial acidification
Transport to France was the main contributor to terrestrial
acidification, with 50% of the impact, followed by the tomato
cultivation (39%) and packaging (10%). Impact was dominated by
nitrogen oxides emissions during the truck transportation, sulphur
dioxide emissions related to fertigation (fertiliser production and
energy consumption), and ammonia emissions occurring after N-
fertiliser field application (Fig. 2). A scenario considering a full truck
showed a 15% reduction of impacts.
3.1.4. Eutrophication
Tomato cultivation was the main contributor to freshwater
eutrophication, with 66% of the impact. This was primarily due to
phosphate emissions during the production of fertilisers. Manu-
facture of packaging and transportation contributed 20% and 12%,
respectively, to freshwater eutrophication. When testing an eco-
nomic allocation, thus considering a higher economic value for the
exported tomato than the locally sold tomato, the freshwater
eutrophication impact increased by 15%. Transport to France was
the main contributor to marine eutrophication, with 38% of the
impact, closely followed by packaging (36%), and then tomato
cultivation (26%). Contribution to marine eutrophication was
dominated by the emissions of nitrogen oxides from truck use.
3.1.5. Ecotoxicity
Tomato cultivation was the main contributor to all ecotoxicity
impact categories: 96% of terrestrial ecotoxicity, 59% of freshwater
ecotoxicity, and 54% of marine ecotoxicity. Terrestrial ecotoxicity
impacts were directly related to pesticide emissions (Fig. 2), more
precisely to the release of Cypermethrin and Methomyl. Regarding
freshwater ecotoxicity, the key contributors were the pesticide
emissions, the greenhouse structure manufacturing, and the en-
ergy use for fertigation. For marine ecotoxicity, greenhouse struc-
ture manufacturing and energy use for fertigation were the main
contributors, while the pesticide contribution was small (less than
3%) (Fig. 2).
Table 2
Contribution analysis of 1 kg of tomatoes at St Charles market gate, ReCiPe midpoint impact assessment method (Hierarchist), including the water characterisation factors of
Pfister et al. (2009).
Impact Category Unit Total Nursery Tomato
cultivation
Packaging Transportation
to France
Climate change Kg CO
2eq
0.546 0.012 0.203 0.091 0.240
Non-renewable energy
(fossil &nuclear)
MJ
eq
9.131 0.391 3.220 1.588 3.932
Terrestrial acidification G SO
2eq
3.203 0.041 1.235 0.328 1.598
Freshwater eutrophication G P
eq
0.168 0.002 0.111 0.034 0.020
Marine eutrophication g N
eq
0.206 0.002 0.053 0.073 0.078
Terrestrial ecotoxicity g 1,4-DB
eq
1.408 0.006 1.347 0.021 0.034
Freshwater ecotoxicity g 1,4-DB
eq
3.126 0.059 1.830 0.675 0.562
Marine ecotoxicity g 1,4-DB
eq
2.888 0.045 1.555 0.573 0.715
Agricultural land occupation m
2
year 0.211 0.001 0.063 0.146 0.001
Metal depletion g Fe
eq
45.290 0.242 31.394 3.584 10.069
Fossil depletion kg oil
eq
0.196 0.008 0.066 0.033 0.089
Water deprivation
Pfister et al. (2009)
LH
2
O
eq
29.738 0.068 27.926 1.176 0.569
S. Payen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e10 5
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3.1.6. Land use
Surprisingly, packaging contributed 69% of the agricultural land
occupation, because of the forest area required for producing the
wood-made cardboard, whereas tomato cultivation represented
only 30% of the impact.
3.1.7. Resource depletion
Tomato cultivation contributed 69% of metal depletion, because
of iron used primarily for the greenhouse structure, and secondly
for the fertigation system. Regarding fossil depletion, the petrol
consumption for trucking was responsible for 46% of the impact,
whereas tomato cultivation represented 34% (explained by the
polyethylene composition of the plastic covering the greenhouse).
3.1.8. Freshwater deprivation
The tomato cultivation was responsible for 94% of the fresh-
water deprivation over the entire tomato life cycle due to irrigation
water use. An economic allocation increased the freshwater
deprivation impacts by 20%.
Additional ReCiPe impact categories are presented in the
supplementary data (Tab. A4).
The high standardisation of the Moroccan tomato production
system is an argument in favour of our data being representative.
Nevertheless, this study would benefit from additional field survey
and data for validation.
3.2. LCA comparison of imported Moroccan and local French
production systems
3.2.1. When importing has lower environmental impacts: the
energy and global warming evidence
Surprisingly, for the French off-season vegetable market,
sourcing local tomatoes during winter in France is not the best
option regarding global warming, energy use and eutrophication
potential (Table 3). Our results reinforce the idea that food miles
can be a misleading indicator (Mil
a-i-Canals et al., 2008; Page et al.,
2011).
Indeed, regarding energy use and global warming potential, our
results showed that export off-season tomatoes grown in non-
heated greenhouses in Southern Morocco had less impact than
local French tomatoes grown under heated greenhouses. Even
considering transport to France, the energy use was three times
lower for the Moroccan export tomato (Table 3). We explain this
result by the low motorisation level of the Moroccan system and
the high environmental impacts of heated crops. Comparison with
the energy use of the Spanish tomato at the farm gate (Torrellas
et al., 2012) showed that the tomato production in Morocco and
in Spain, both under non-heated greenhouses, had similar energy
use impacts: 3.61 and 4.00 MJ kg
1
tomato, respectively. These
similar results highlighted that sourcing tomatoes in warm,
southern countries seems more favourable from an energy
perspective even if adding the extra burdens due to transport.
Williams et al. (2008) and Webb et al. (2013) reached the same
conclusion comparing Spanish tomato production and delivery to
the United Kingdom with local tomato production.
Our results confirm the lesser impacts of Moroccan export to-
mato compared to local French production, with 95% and 38% less
impact in terms of marine eutrophication and freshwater eutro-
phication, respectively. Even when packaging and transport to
France are included, the impacts are reduced by 79% and 8%,
respectively. When testing a conservative approach: assuming a
nitrate leaching of 20% of N-fertiliser (Boulard et al., 2011), the
marine eutrophication potential reaches 0.68 g N
eq
kg
1
Moroccan
tomato, but is still below the 0.96 g N
eq
kg
1
of the French tomato at
the farm gate.
Acidification potential results showed the same trend, but only
at the farm gate. In contrast with previous impact categories, in-
clusion of the post-farm stages (packaging and transport) brought
the Moroccan tomato above the French tomato (Table 3), primarily
because of the emissions of acid particles during the transportation
from Morocco to France.
Fig. 2. Contribution analysis of 1 kg of tomatoes at the farm gate (Morocco), with the ReCiPe midpoint impact assessment method (Hierarchist), including the water characterisation
factors of Pfister et al. (2009). Nursery-to-farm transportation and tillage contributions are not visible on the chart.
S. Payen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e106
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3.2.2. When producing locally has lower environmental impacts:
the freshwater use evidence
Growing crops with high water requirements in water-scarce
areas has important implications. Indeed, although the water use
efficiency was similar, with 28.6 L kg
1
for Moroccan tomatoes and
32.8 L kg
1
for French tomatoes, Moroccan tomato freshwater
deprivation was almost four times higher, with 28.0 L H
2
O
eq
kg
1
for Moroccan tomatoes and 7.5 L H
2
O
eq
kg
1
for French tomatoes
(see Supplementary Fig. A5). This was explained by the high WSI of
the Souss-Massa area. Our results confirmed those of Pfister et al.
(2011a), who modelled the global water consumption of 160
crops and characterised the irrigation water volume with the WSI.
Although their water inventory was not specific to the cropping
system (based on FAO's CROPWAT model, global databases, and
statistical data), these authors obtained the same ranking regarding
freshwater deprivation for the Moroccan and French tomatoes,
with 29.2 L H
2
O
eq
kg
1
and 0.25 L H
2
O
eq
kg
1
, respectively.
However, certain issues and limitations remain with regard to
the freshwater use impact. The WSI is calculated at annual scale,
which seems irrelevant for regions with distinct dry and humid
seasons and more particularly for agricultural water use (Tendall
et al., 2013). Therefore, Pfister and Baumann (2012) are devel-
oping monthly WSI indicators. Moreover, there is no consensus on
the freshwater characterisation factors regarding both the numer-
ator (water withdrawal (Pfister et al., 2009) or water consumption
(Berger and Finkbeiner, 2012; Boulay et al., 2011b)) and the de-
nominator (whether to include groundwater and surface water
stocks (Boulay et al., 2011b; Tendall et al., 2013)ornot(Pfister et al.,
2009) in the total available water). The spatial resolution of the
characterisation factors is also of critical importance (country,
watershed or sub-watershed scale; Tendall et al., 2013). It is
important to note that the tomato production for exportation is not
marginal in the Souss-Massa area and represents an important part
of the total water withdrawal. Hence, the function studied directly
influences the numerator of the WSI defined by Pfister et al. (20 09):
the system studied affects the characterisation factor.
Our results demonstrated that the ranking of Moroccan export
tomatoes against local French tomatoes depended on the impact
category. There is a trade-off between the low impacts of energy
use, global warming potential and eutrophication of winter pro-
duction in Southern warm countries and the high water stress in
those arid countries. Hospido et al. (2012), Page et al. (2012), and
Stoessel et al. (2012) also highlighted the trade-off between water
and carbon footprints, while Pfister et al. (2011a) showed the trade-
off between water footprint and land use depending on the location
of the crop production. These outcomes highlight the importance of
including all of the potential impacts when using LCA to compare
agricultural system alternatives. Standalone mid-point indicators
addressing a unique environmental issue should be used with
caution (Page et al., 2012).
3.2.3. Damage-wise comparison of Moroccan and French tomato
production
Because the ranking of systems differed depending on the
impact category, setting recommendations is challenging. Indeed,
which priority should be set between global warming and local (or
regional) freshwater deprivation? Because the decision making
process should at least in theory be based on scientific evidence,
aggregation of impacts into damages seems to be a promising
approach to help decision makers. Thus, we calculated the end-
points to compare the damages of the Moroccan and French to-
mato production and analysed the contribution of freshwater
deprivation to the total damages.
The damages of the Moroccan tomato production were 79%, 74%
and 88% lower than the French system at the farm gate for Human
Health, Ecosystems and Resources, respectively (Fig. 3). Even when
adding the Moroccan tomato packaging and transport to France,
the damages remained 54%, 41% and 69% lower for the imported
tomatoes.
The contribution of mid-point impact categories to end-point
damages indicated that the damages from climate change and
fossil depletion were most important. For the French tomato, the
contribution of water deprivation to the total damages was negli-
gible, while the contributions of climate change (more than 90% for
Human Health and Ecosystems) and fossil depletion (more than
99% for Resources) predominated (Fig. 3). Although the Moroccan
tomato damages are also dominated by climate change and fossil
depletion, the contribution of water deprivation to the total dam-
ages was notable, with 14%, 20% and 2% contributions to Human
Health, Ecosystems and Resources, respectively. Thus, excluding the
freshwater use impacts would have underestimated the damages to
Human Health and Ecosystems. The surprisingly low contribution
of freshwater use to the Resources damages may be explained
by the low damage factor for water (0.89 $ m
3
in Souss-Massa)
compared with the high damage factor for crude oil
(14,350 $ m
3
oil). The freshwater damage factor is based on the
concept of backup technology and relies on the money required for
seawater desalination (1 $ m
3
;Pfister et al., 2011b). We further
investigated this aspect by expressing the Resources damages in
terms of surplus energy instead of monetary value. When assessing
the water contribution to Resources damages using EcoIndicator 99
(Goedkoop and Spriensma, 2001), the water impact contribution
to Resources damage reached 22%. This is explained by more
similarity between the damage factors for crude oil
(5.08 MJ surplus m
3
) and water (9.34 MJ surplus m
3
) in this
method. This outcome shows that expressing damages to Resources
in terms of energy equivalent or monetary value strongly influences
the results. Generally speaking, modelling the cause-effect chain up
to the damages is associated with high uncertainty (Jolliet et al.,
2003), particularly for freshwater damages assessment, which is
still under development. Thus, it would be inappropriate to make
Table 3
Global Warming Potential (kg CO
2eq
), Energy use (MJ
eq
), Marine eutrophication potential (g N
eq
), Freshwater eutrophication potential (g P
eq
), Acidification potential (g SO
2eq
)
and Freshwater deprivation potential (L H
2
O
eq
) of 1 kg of tomato for the Moroccan and French off-season tomato production systems.
Publication Cropping system and functional unit Climate
change
(100 year)
Non-renewable
energy
consumption
Marine
eutrophication
Freshwater
eutrophication
Terrestrial
acidification
Water
deprivation,
Pfister et al. 2009
,
a
kg CO
2eq
MJ
eq
gN
eq
gP
eq
gSO
2eq
LH
2
O
eq
This study 1 kg tomato at St Charles market gate,
grown in plastic greenhouse
0.55 9.13 0.21 0.17 3.20 29.7
1 kg tomato at farm gate, grown in
plastic greenhouse
0.22 3.61 0.05 0.11 1.28 28.0
Boulard et al. (2011)
adapted
1 kg tomato at the farm gate, grown
in glass/plastic greenhouse
1.75 30.44 0.96 0.18 2.94 7.5
a
Water deprivation for the water consumed during foreground and background processes.
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recommendations for tomato sourcing based on end-point results.
Beyond end-points, the impacts scale is crucial: water deprivation
is a pressing local issue, whereas climate change is a global issue.
The decision level and viewpoint of the decision makers (policy
maker, consumer or farmer) will prevail in the decision-making
process.
An analysis of water damages revealed that the contribution of
water consumed during background processes may be important,
demonstrating the importance of localising the water withdrawals
to assign the region-specific WSI instead of the global WSI (Fig. A5).
3.3. The need for a reliable inventory for accurately modelling the
impacts of freshwater use
As shown above, considering the impacts of freshwater use in
the LCA of local versus imported tomatoes is critical; ignoring them
may lead to underestimating the total damages of the studied
systems. However, we demonstrated that the freshwater impact
and damage assessment still has shortcomings. Extensive and
comprehensive research is on-going for the modelling of impacts
and damages due to freshwater use. We want to emphasise below
the need for methodological improvement in the inventory stage
because it is a complex task to which the impact assessment is
closely related.
First, the inventory should differentiate the sources of water
(from surface or groundwater) because they have different
renewability rates and functionalities (Bayart et al., 2010). This is
particularly relevant in the coastal Souss-Massa area, where the
groundwater is threatened by over-exploitation of long residence
time water (several thousands of years) and by salinisation by
seawater intrusion (Bouchaou et al., 2008). The average Souss-
Chtouka aquifer withdrawal to recharge ratio is 180% (Faysse
et al., 2012). In this context, accounting for the groundwater
resource depletion and salinisation impacts provoked by the agri-
cultural activity would probably result in greater impacts than
assessed in this study. The development of salinisation impacts
pathways are needed in LCA (Stoessel et al., 2012), as salinisation
may affect both water and soil (Williams, 1999; Wood et al., 20 00).
The first attempts to model salinisation impacts in the LCA
framework (Amores et al., 2013; Feitz and Lundie, 2002) must be
completed with other salinisation pathways such as the one com-
mented in this case study.
Another important aspect regarding the water inventory con-
cerns the water balance. Crop water consumption is often esti-
mated through the modelling of crop water requirements, with
tools such as CROPWAT (Faist Emmenegger et al., 2011; Mil
a-i-
Canals et al., 2008; Pfister et al., 2011a, 2009; Ridoutt and Pfister,
2010). Primary data collection, as performed in this study, is pref-
erable because the producer may use more or less water than
predicted by the model due to natural and socioeconomic cir-
cumstances. For example, in the case study of Spanish tomato
production, Torrellas et al. (2012) indicated that the irrigation water
supply included a 25% surplus in order to counter soil salinisation.
When primary data on water use refers to water withdrawals, it is
necessary to subtract drainage, deep percolation, return flow and
runoff, all of which return to the environment, in order to calculate
the actual water consumption. The method by Pfister et al. (2009)
focuses on the water consumed and does not account for the
quality degradation of irrigation return flows: the loss of water
quality as a loss of freshwater resources is not addressed. However,
irrigation return flows carry more salts, nutrients, minerals and
pesticides into surface and ground waters, impacting downstream
agricultural and natural systems (Tilman et al., 2002). Indeed, water
is a vector of solutes and pollutants that may degrade water quality
and thus affects the resource. Contrary to the method of Pfister et al.
(2009), the framework proposed by Boulay et al. (2011a &b) con-
siders that water-quality degradation can lead to water deprivation
if the quality is no longer suitable for use. They address water-
related impacts accounting for both input and output water flows
in terms of quantity, quality and origin, as recommended by the
WULCA working group (Kounina et al., 2013). However, this
method requires inventorying the volume and quality of the
released water, which is a complex task for agricultural systems
because it depends on local parameters of soil, climate, and prac-
tices. There is a need for a consistent inventory modelling
approach: linking the input flows of water, pesticides, nutrient and
salts, with the output flows via a model accounting for soil, climate,
and practices. Such an operational tool would be valuable to feed
current and future freshwater impact assessment methods. The
central and recurring question is to find the correct balance be-
tween data requirement and accuracy.
Fig. 3. Human Health (DALY), Ecosystems (species. year) and Resources ($) damages comparison for 1 kg Moroccan or French tomatoes at farm gate. Impact contribution to the total
damages. The negligible contributors are not shown on the legend: Ionising radiation, Photochemical oxidant formation and Ozone depletion for Human Health, Terrestrial
acidification, Freshwater eutrophication, Freshwater and marine ecotoxicities for Ecosystems, and metal depletion for Resources.
S. Payen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e108
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4. Conclusion
This study not only produces a reference for the environmental
impacts of a Moroccan tomato, but also highlights crucial issues
related to the comparison of environmental impacts of food prod-
ucts. First, we produced a cradle-to-market LCA study, including the
impacts of freshwater use, for one typical case study of the off-
season supply of vegetables: off-season tomatoes, produced for
the French market, grown in the arid region of West Southern
Morocco under non-heated greenhouses. Over the entire life cycle
studied, tomato cultivation mainly contributed to water depriva-
tion, freshwater eutrophication, ecotoxicity and metal depletion,
whereas tomato transport from Morocco to France was the main
contributor to climate change, terrestrial acidification, marine
eutrophication and fossil depletion. Second, we applied the same
LCIA method to the French cropping systems, already studied by
Boulard et al. (2011), characterised by heated greenhouses with
high levels of inputs, which also provide off-season tomatoes to the
French market. The comparison of the environmental impacts of
the Moroccan and the French tomatoes shows that the inclusion of
the impacts of freshwater use is critical, revealing a trade-off be-
tween usual impact categories, mostly energy-related, and fresh-
water use impacts. Indeed, sourcing tomatoes in France mitigates
impacts from a freshwater resource perspective but not from car-
bon, energy, or eutrophication perspectives. Aggregating impacts
into damages did not allow us to make recommendations due to
methodological shortcomings and uncertainty in the current
damage modelling. This outcome is particularly relevant for food
LCA addressing the question of product sourcing: how to build a
decision when assessing the best sourcing option from an envi-
ronmental point of view? This study shows that it is paramount to
include all relevant impacts in LCA, such as water deprivation for
irrigated agricultural systems, and also identify key limitations of
the current methods for freshwater use assessment. Indeed, the
current freshwater impact assessment method is not complete and
probably leads to underestimating the impacts for the Moroccan
tomato study case. Aquifer overuse causing water depletion and
salinisation is not properly addressed. In addition, impact assess-
ment methods should be based on a reliable inventory. An opera-
tional tool estimating water fluxes both qualitatively and
quantitatively would be valuable to feed current and future fresh-
water impacts assessment methods of agricultural products.
Acknowledgements
This work is part of FLONUDEP project ANR-09-ALIA-004,
funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR), promoting
the sustainability of vegetable supply chain (http://flonudep.iamm.
fr). The authors, members of the ELSA research group (Environ-
mental Life-cycle and Sustainability Assessment (http://www1.
montpellier.inra.fr/elsa/) are grateful to the French Regional Au-
thority of Languedoc-Roussillon for its support to ELSA. The authors
thank the SUNCROPS and SIRWA companies (Agadir, Morocco) who
kindly provided data on the farming and packaging stages, and
Thierry Boulard from INRA (France) and his co-authors (Boulard
et al., 2011) for providing the French tomato production data set,
which permitted a relevant comparison with the Moroccan tomato
production. The authors are also grateful to Cecile Fovet-Rabot for
editorial advice and support on the early versions of the paper.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.0 07.
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S. Payen et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e1010
Please cite this article in press as: Payen, S., et al., LCA of local and imported tomato: an energy and water trade-off, Journal of Cleaner Production
(2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.10.007
