Reporting and practices of sustainability in controlled environment agriculture: a scoping review

When compared to traditional field production, controlled environment agriculture (CEA) such as greenhouses and indoor vertical farms (VF) have sustainability benefits such as reduced land use, less product transportation to consumers, improved resource and land-use efficiencies, food safety, and lo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environment systems & decisions 2024-06, Vol.44 (2), p.301-326
Main Authors: Coon, Donald, Lindow, Lauren, Boz, Ziynet, Martin-Ryals, Ana, Zhang, Ying, Correll, Melanie
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Availability
Circular economy
Control
Earth and Environmental Science
education
Electricity
energy
Energy consumption
Environment
Environmental Management
Farm buildings
Farms
Food availability
Food safety
Geographical distribution
Geographical locations
Land use
lighting
Literature reviews
multidisciplinary
Organic wastes
people
Public opinion
Quality Control
Reliability
Review
Safety and Risk
Science
Sustainability
Sustainable practices
Systems Theory
transportation
Urban agriculture
Vertical farming
viability
Wastewater reuse
Water reuse
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Summary:When compared to traditional field production, controlled environment agriculture (CEA) such as greenhouses and indoor vertical farms (VF) have sustainability benefits such as reduced land use, less product transportation to consumers, improved resource and land-use efficiencies, food safety, and local food availability. Despite its potential as an environmentally beneficial complement to conventional farming, CEA has numerous issues that limits its adoption and viability as a sustainable option. This review summarizes the literature on key areas of sustainability in CEA, such as (1) sustainability challenges, (2) technologies identified to address sustainability in CEA, (3) quantification and reporting of sustainability in CEA, and (4) gaps and opportunities in addressing CEA sustainability. To filter the available literature from the databases including Web of Science, this scoping review employed a combination of the keywords “sustainability,” “controlled environment agriculture,” “urban farm,” “vertical farm,” and “indoor farm.” According to the review, main obstacles in CEA were high electricity use, geographical location-related tradeoffs, and an unfavorable public perception of CEA in comparison to field production. These issues are now being addressed by optimized lighting and sensor technology, models, decision support tools to reduce electricity use, and marketing tactics to educate people about the benefits of CEA. This scoping review offers two critical areas to focus sustainability improvement efforts: lowering electrical demand and using circular techniques for organic waste and wastewater reuse in CEA to increase water, nutrient, and energy use efficiency and recovery. In addition, it discusses the techniques and approaches to sustainability assessment in CEA, particularly within the research and application contexts. This scoping review, thus, outlines strategies for enhancing sustainability in CEA, highlighting the importance of integrating circular economy principles and advanced technologies to optimize resource use, and advocates for ongoing research and education to shift public perceptions toward the sustainable potential of CEA. Graphical abstract
ISSN:2194-5403
2194-5411
DOI:10.1007/s10669-024-09964-z