Title
Environmental footprint of critical agro-export products in the Peruvian hyper-arid coast: A case study for green asparagus and avocado
Date Issued
20 April 2022
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Publisher(s)
Elsevier B.V.
Abstract
Peru has become one of the world's main agricultural hubs for a wide range of fruits and vegetables. Two of these products, avocado and green asparagus, have raised attention in recent years in the international scene from an environmental perspective due to the high amounts of water they require, as well as the long air and marine freighting distances to export these products to Europe, Asia or the US. Consequently, the aim of the current study was to perform an environmental assessment of these two products using two life-cycle methods: carbon and water footprint. For the latter, water scarcity, acidification, eco-toxicity and eutrophication impact categories have been selected for assessment. Inventory data were gathered from six different companies located in different regions of the hyper-arid Peruvian coast. The results report that the products are not carbon intensive and are in line with other similar plant-based products. Conversely, the hyper-arid conditions of the cultivation sites require a large volume of groundwater to fulfill the needs of the crops. Interestingly, even though this may lead to overexploitation of groundwater resources in the absence of appropriate management policies, the low mobility of pollutants, namely pesticides, constitutes a natural barrier to protect the degradation of natural water bodies. Similarly, highly technified irrigation systems have allowed minimizing the amounts of water used per hectare. In conclusion, results from this study may be useful in more concise environmental assessment studies on food products and diets, considering the consumption of these Peruvian products in many countries in the world. Furthermore, results are also important at regional level since they depict the carbon and water performance of these products and can also be accompanied by cross-cutting certification schemes, including Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules Guidance.
Volume
818
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ingeniería ambiental y geológica Alimentos y bebidas Agricultura
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85120813381
PubMed ID
Source
Science of the Total Environment
ISSN of the container
00489697
Sponsor(s)
The authors would like to thank PromPerú for financial and technical support to analyze agricultural products, as well as all the anonymous agricultural companies involved in the project and that keenly provided valuable data to conduct the environmental analysis. Xavier Esteve-Llorens wishes to thank the Xunta de Galicia (Project ref. ED431F 2016/001 ) and Becas Iberoamérica – Santander Investigación 2019-2020 for financial support. Dr. S. González-Garcia would like to express her gratitude to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness for financial support (Grant reference RYC-2014-14984 ). Dr. María Teresa Moreira, Dr. Gumersindo Feijoo, Dr. Sara González-García and MSc Xavier Esteve-Llorens belong to the Galician Competitive Research Group GRC ED431C 2017/29 as well as to CRETUS ( ED431E 2018/01 ), co-funded by Xunta de Galicia and FEDER (EU). Dr. Isabel Quispe is thanked for funding acquisition. Dr. Pedro Villanueva-Rey, Dr. Isabel Quispe, MSc Gustavo Larrea-Gallegos and BSc Kurt Ziegler-Rodriguez are all thanked for their valuable contribution with the capacity-building activities aimed at raising awareness among producers.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus