4 ms·
How much more energy spent though?
by mongol 3y ago
How much more energy spent though?
- bavent 3y agoAlso how do they taste? My recollection of Dutch tomatoes is they they are not very good. Bland, watery.
- temporarara 3y agoGenerally in agriculture (and other domains too) when you maximize output the quality suffers. And tomatoes are no exception. Growing your own or finding a small hobby grower and greatly appreciating their efforts are your best bets for having actual tasty stuff. Tomatoes are no longer true luxury food but tasty tomatoes are.
- chris_va 3y agoWell... (if I am calculating correctly) A tomato plant is roughly ~40lbs/sqft/year (hydroponic... at 40W/sqft). That's a bit higher than the 80kg/m^2 estimate, but I don't have the wattage requirements for the lower yield. But, assuming it is linear, about 20Wh/g-tomato. And then, from a climate impact standpoint... The marginal CO2 emissions factor in the Netherlands is pretty high at ~0.6kg/kWh, so ~2kg-CO2 for every (~6oz) tomato. That is about 200-300x higher than the CO2 from trucking (refrigerated) tomatoes from Spain to Netherlands (~30-40kg-CO2/ton-tomato/1000 miles ~= 7g-CO2/tomato). The local ecological (water+fertilizer+pesticide) impact is probably higher in Spain (vs the greenhouse construction and land use in the Netherlands), though it is hard to know how much to trade that off.
- TheAlchemist 3y agoVaclav Smil had some interesting calculations on tomatoes too - in his book 'How the World really works'. (link not from the book, but very similar) https://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Tomatoes-IEEE-Spectrum-.pdf https://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Tomatoes-I...