INTRODUCTION:

Environmental impact of agricultural production has been increasingly studied and it has been considered that there is an influence of the geographical location of its production and consumption.

OBJECTIVES:

To quantify and compare the environmental impact of tomatoes at the local versus global production level, using case studies, and to simulate the corresponding Global Warming Potential (100 years), in kg CO2 eq, of tomato production in Portugal versus tomato production imported from Spain, France and Sweden.

METHODOLOGY:

From April to May 2022, Scopus was used to include articles in this narrative review. Terms such as “life cycle analysis”, “tomato”, “production”, “environmental impact” and “sustainability indicator” were included. SIMA PRO software (version 2022) was used to obtain Global Warming Potential (100 years), in kg CO2 eq, for tomato production in Spain, Italy and Netherlands. The same information was sought in literature for Portugal.

RESULTS:

Five cross-sectional articles carried out in Spain, France, Sweden and Austria were included. The following sustainability indicators were considered: Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Global Warming Potential, Water Deprivation and Depletion of the Ozone Layer. It is not possible to say that tomatoes from local production have a lower environmental impact than their global production (imports), being this impact depending on factors such as production type and the sustainability indicator used. Considering the simulation performed, it is expected that producing tomatoes in Portugal has a lower Global Warming Potential (100 years) than importing it from Spain, Netherlands or Italy (0.035-0.080); kg CO2 eq versus 0.84, 2.12 e 1.56 kg CO2 eq, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS:

Environmental impact of local tomato production is not always less comparing to tomato from global production. More studies are needed in Portugal to determine the environmental impact of tomato production to be able to, more robustly, make comparisons with other countries.

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