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Article

Ecological Balance of Agri-Food Supply Chains—The Case of the Industrial Tomato

by
Angelo Martella
1,
Ilenia Maria La Porta
1,*,
Marco Nicastro
2,
Elisa Biagetti
1 and
Silvio Franco
1
1
Department of Economics, Engineering, Society and Business Organization, University of Tuscia, Via del Paradiso 47, 01100 Viterbo, Italy
2
Cooperativa OP Mediterraneo, 71017 Torremaggiore, Italy
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2023, 15(10), 7846; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15107846
Submission received: 3 March 2023 / Revised: 26 April 2023 / Accepted: 9 May 2023 / Published: 10 May 2023
(This article belongs to the Section Sustainable Food)
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Abstract

:
Tomatoes are one of the major productions in Italy. One of the main cultivation areas is the southern plain of Capitanata (Puglia, Southern Italy). However, a series of impacts from cultivation to distribution are connected to this production. Different methodologies have been proposed to evaluate and quantify these impacts from the single product to the supply chain. This work proposes a methodology for assessing environmental sustainability, using the agri-food chain of industrial tomatoes in a specific area of Italy (Puglia) as a case study. The theoretical approach adopted refers to the paradigm of ecological economics, recalling the concept of strong sustainability through the conservation of natural capital and its non-replacement with economic capital. This condition can be assessed through the ecological balance tool by comparing the availability and use of natural capital in economic activities. The aim of this study was to understand the extent of the load generated on the environment, thus evaluating whether the carrying capacity of the agricultural system was able to support the environmental load of the entire supply chain. The results show an overall unsustainability of the entire supply chain with a value of EB = −1911.49 gha. The agricultural phase is the only one to present a positive value EB = +62.99 gha, which fails to compensate for the impacts of the transport (EB = −349.13) and industrial (EB = −1630.96) phases. To our knowledge, this is the first study to assess the sustainability of the tomato food chain using the ecological footprint method. In the agricultural sector, there is a constant search for tools capable of combining economic efficiency and environmental sustainability. In this sense, the ecological footprint methodology provides essential information that can be used by policymakers of different levels to define sustainable development strategies.

1. Introduction

Many consumers are rediscovering the value of the food they buy and eat every day. This is the case with the tomato, which, due to its innumerable nutritional and antioxidant properties, is one of the most consumed vegetables.
Italy is one of the most important producers in the world, together with the USA, China, Spain, Turkey, and Portugal [1]. It is the first country in Europe with a share of 27% of the total production in 2021 [2]. About 75% of this production is destined for industrial transformation, while the rest is destined for fresh consumption [3]. Geographically Italian production is highly concentrated: 33% of industrial tomatoes are localized in the Capitanata area (located in Puglia—Southern Italy) [4].
However, the tomato is considered a product with a great environmental impact due to the considerable use of irrigation water and fertilization [5]. It has been estimated that the amount of irrigation water needed varies between 400 and 600 mm per hectare [6]. This is a crucial aspect, considering the current water crisis and increasingly severe drought conditions. However, the impacts are not only connected to the agricultural phase. In the industrial tomato supply chain, for instance, the transformation phase causes significant environmental impacts and requires a great amount of energy [7]; moreover, in many cases, the industrial plant is located far from the tomato production area, generating impacts for the transport of the product, which varies in response to various factors [8,9].
Nowadays, the studies of the environmental effects of agricultural and agri-food activities have become an object of great interest in various contexts ranging from farms to territories or from single products to, of course, supply chains. The consumer’s attention to the environmental implications linked to food production is more and more growing as they direct their choices toward environmentally compatible products [10,11,12]. In this context, the attribute of “sustainability” may certainly add immaterial quality to products, consequently increasing their value [13,14]. For this to happen, consumers must have clear and reliable information on the actual environmental performance of that product [15].
This study aimed to propose a methodology, based on the ecological footprint approach, to assess the environmental sustainability of agri-food chains considering the industrial tomato as the investigated product. Specifically, it assessed the strong sustainability of the whole supply chain distinguishing among agricultural production, transport, and industrial transformation phases. The analysis-specific objectives were to (i) assess the sustainability in the agricultural phase; (ii) assess the impact of the transport phase; (iii) assess the impact of the industrial phase; (iv) assess the sustainability of the entire supply chain. The scope was to understand if the carrying capacity of the agricultural system was able to support the environmental load of the entire supply chain.
The study is innovative in many aspects. Firstly, it uses a methodology that examines not only the impacts and the supply of natural resources with the possibility of establishing an ecological balance.
Secondly, it represents the first environmental sustainability assessment of the tomato supply chain from the agricultural to the industrial phase.
Thirdly, it is an assessment that allows the effective environmental impact of human activities on ecosystems to be detected, obtaining essential information for adopting truly environmental measures.
The paper consists of four parts: the theoretical framework is introduced in Section 2; Section 3 explains the adopted methodology and briefly describes the case study; Section 4 presents the study results, which are discussed in Section 5. The paper ends with some concluding remarks based on the main outcomes of the study.

2. Theoretical Framework

In recent decades, various methodologies have been proposed and applied to quantify the environmental impacts of economic activities and the products they originate from. These methodologies look at the implications on the ecosystem in terms of demand for natural resources (materials and energy) and the capacity to absorb waste and emissions.
Tools based on this approach, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), can evaluate in an extremely comprehensive way the entity of the “load” on the environment that production generates. Nevertheless, they report information only on the environmental impact of activities. Still, they cannot give any evidence about their sustainability since they do not compare the impact with the carrying capacity of the ecosystems involved in production [16]. In other words, they provide detailed and rigorous information on the consumption of natural resources, ignoring the related resources’ availability.
To overcome this limitation, other tools, like the ecological footprint method [17], have been proposed to assess the sustainability of production activities. Many scholars agree that this methodology is suitable for the assessment of the strong sustainability condition intended for the preservation of natural capital, human activities, and agricultural production [18,19,20,21,22].
The ecological footprint approach is based on an indicator named Ecological Footprint (EF), which expresses the equivalent biologically productive area required to generate the renewable resources and ecological services exploited by anthropic activities carried out in that area. It represents the idea of carrying capacity by converting the impact of human activity within a region in terms of the bioproductive area able to provide the used resources and assimilate the produced waste [23]. On the other side, the ecological footprint approach considers another indicator, named BioCapacity (BC), which measures the capacity of the ecosystems in the area to generate renewable resources and ecological services [24,25]. The Ecological Balance (EB), obtained as the difference between BC and EF, quantifies the environmental surplus/deficit of an area. Therefore, the ecological footprint methodology can be considered an effective tool for stating the environmental sustainability of economic activities [18,20,22].
An ecological balance can also be calculated for an agri-food supply chain. It can be calculated by comparing the cumulative environmental impact of each phase of the supply chain (“from farm to fork”) with the biocapacity mainly supplied by the agricultural phase and represented by the total amount of the farmland where the considered commodity is produced [26,27].
The theoretical approach, which assumes the ecological footprint as a reference to evaluate the environmental performance of a supply chain, was applied in some studies generally focused on the supply chain production phases: farming, transport, and industrial processing [28,29,30,31].
Such an approach was adopted in this study focused on the industrial tomato supply chain. In particular, the three phases were considered separately, evaluating for each one of them the environmental performance. For tomato production, an ecological balance of the field phase was carried out to provide a key indication of the sustainability of the farming system [32]. While tomato transportation only increases the amount of EF, a positive contribution to BC can be associated with the industrial phase. This may be generated by (generally small) bioproductive areas inside the industrial plant borders or by photovoltaic energy production systems.
Once aggregated, the results obtained in each single phase define the ecological balance of the whole supply chain that establishes its environmental (strong) sustainability condition.

3. Data and Methods

3.1. Study Area

The tomatoes produced by an Agriculture Cooperative (AC) located in the province of Foggia (Puglia) and processed by a company located in the province of Salerno (Campania), which also sells the final products on the market, were selected as a case study (Figure 1).
As mentioned in the introduction, the analyzed supply chain refers to tomatoes produced in a total area of 592.30 ha. In 2021, a total of 13,240 tons of tomatoes were produced; these were transported to the processing plant located 190 km away. This plant exclusively processes tomatoes from the AC and offers different types of packaging.
The environmental performances of the supply chain single phases, assessed accordingly with the proposed methodology, are reported below.

3.2. Data Sources

Primary data concerning types and dimensions of the agricultural area production were extracted from the integrated administration and control system document, while the information on cultivation techniques were collected through direct interviews with individual farmers.
As for transport, direct interviews with the company manager allowed us to collect data such as road route and the km travelled, load capacity, average fuel consumption, and the environmental class of the used vehicles.
For the transformation stage, a site inspection was carried out at the company to analyze the various phases of the process and to collect data related to the amount of material and energy. Concerning the embodied energy of different typologies of tomato sauce packaging, values reported in the Ecoinvent database were used [33].
The analysis was carried out in 2022, considering the production data for 2021. The evaluation of the 2022 production data is currently underway, and, at the moment, it seems to confirm 2021 data, also considering the unavoidable differences either in the diversification of crops or in their respective yields.

3.3. Ecological Balance Assessment

3.3.1. Agricultural Phase

The ecological balance of agricultural activities (EBAG) is obtained as the difference between the available biocapacity in the farming system (BCAG) and the impact of farming activities evaluated in terms of ecological footprint (EFAG).
BCAG is obtained by considering the different types of land cover present in the farming system distinguished between areas devoted to agricultural production and non-productive areas, namely forest, grazing, built-up land, and other surfaces. Biocapacity provided by cropland (BCCR) is calculated as proposed by [34], i.e., the ratio of the yield of each crop in the farming system to the world yield and then applying the cropland equivalent factor [35]. Not productive areas biocapacity (BCNP) is calculated according to the standard ecological footprint methodology [17].
EFFR is calculated considering all processes linked to farm management, which can be aggregated into three components: crops (EFCR), livestock (EFLS), and other farming activities (EFOF). In this study, EFLS was not considered because no breeding activity is present in the farming system.
To assess EFCR, the methodology proposed by [34] was applied. It evaluates the EF of each crop by adding two impacts: the soil exploitation and the environmental effects of the utilized inputs. The first impact is associated with production increment with respect to the absence (except for harvesting) of any human intervention. The second type of impact is calculated considering all inputs used in the cultivation process (machinery, labor, fertilization, irrigation, pest management). Once the two impacts are added for each crop, they are summarized to obtain the EFCR value [36].
The EFOF component is mainly related to the maintenance of farm structures, such as buildings, roads, wells, irrigation systems, and so on. These types of interventions are mainly carried out using machinery and labor; hence, these two factors are considered to evaluate the related impact [32].
It follows that the ecological balance of the agricultural phase is calculated as:
EBAG = BCAG − EFAG = (BCCR + BCNP) − (EFCR + EFOF)
It expresses the balance between the availability and use of natural capital in the agricultural phase, highlighting a situation of environmental surplus or deficit, which corresponds to a condition of sustainability or unsustainability [32].

3.3.2. Transport Phase

The impact of tomato transport from the production site to the processing plant, assessed through the EFTR indicator, is mainly associated with greenhouse gas emissions, which are linked, for each transport, to the distance travelled, the load weight, and the truck characteristics.
The number of trips was obtained by dividing the total quantity produced (13,240 tons) by the load capacity of a vehicle (28.5 tons), thus obtaining the value of the EF generated by the transport phase. Furthermore, the impact associated with the return journey was also taken into account, considering the empty truck emissions only and its relative weight.
For the conversion of CO2 emissions in terms of EF, it is possible to refer to the base value reported by Mancini et al. (2016) [37] regarding the average carbon sequestration per hectare of forest worldwide (0.730 ton C/ha).
Considering the C conversion coefficient to CO2 (3.664 kg CO2/kg C), we obtained a sequestration of CO2 per hectare of forest worldwide equal to 2.675 tons CO2/ha. This results in an average CO2 sequestration capacity of the forests (Average Forest Carbon Sequestration—AFCS) of 0.374 ha/tonCO2, expressed in gha equal to 0.477 gha/tonCO2. With this value, it was possible to calculate the EF of the emissions for the entire transport phase.

3.3.3. Industrial Phase

The tomato transformation process can be divided into the following stages:
(1)
Preliminary phase: receipt of the raw material, qualitative assessment, weighing, unloading, washing, and sorting operations.
(2)
Specific phase: sending to the production lines and subsequent distinct treatment based on the derivatives to be obtained (purée and whole peeled tomatoes).
(3)
Packaging phase: container labeling, packaging (glass and steel tin), and final storage.
The impact of the whole processing phase, expressed by the EFIN indicator, is related to the emissions due to energy consumption and the impact associated with the embodied energy of tomato sauce packaging. The evaluation did not consider water consumption, as it is recycled through a pump mechanism, which, however, implies the use of the electricity necessary for its functioning.
The analysis of embodied energy is an important aspect to be considered. This analysis reveals the energy expended to create the different products. In fact, goods and services generated by economic activities have an intrinsic energy value associated with the energy employed for production [38,39]. The embodied energy measure was applied to the various materials utilized for the packaging phase to obtain the corresponding CO2 emissions [33].
The conversion of CO2 emissions, either for energy consumption or embodied energy, was carried out with reference to what was reported in the previous paragraph.
Also, it should be noted that the industrial phase can be associated with very limited components of bioproductivity linked to the area where the tomato processing plant is settled. This is mainly associated with the built-up land biocapacity, which is evaluated according to the standard ecological footprint methodology [17]. Furthermore, installing a photovoltaic system, in which energy production can be computed as another source of biocapacity or a reduction in ecological footprint, may be taken into account through an appropriate conversion of the produced energy in terms of global hectares.
It follows that the industrial phase can be associated with a BCIN, which must be considered in the ecological balance assessment.

3.3.4. Supply Chain

To evaluate the sustainability of the agri-food supply chain, the results obtained for agricultural, transport, and industrial phases were simply aggregated. In particular, the impact generated in the whole supply chain (EFSC = EFAG + EFTR + EFIN) was compared to the carrying capacity expressed by the bioproductivity of the agricultural system and, to a lesser extent, the one of the industrial plant area (BCSC = BCAG + BCIN). In other terms, the supply chain is calculated as follows:
EBSC = BCSC − EFSC = (BCAG + BCIN) − (EFAG + EFTR + EFIN)
The methodology is summarized in Figure 2, which highlights the single phases of the supply chain and the method for assessing each environmental performance.

4. Results

4.1. Agricultural Phase

The first result of the study is represented by the ecological balance related to the agricultural phase, obtained by considering each type of land cover (cultivated, grazing, forest, built-up, water) and their relative management methods.
Considering cultivated land, the contribution of each crop to the biocapacity and ecological footprint is shown in Table 1. As can be seen, the value of the total biocapacity generated by the crops (BCCR = 2003.70 gha) is slightly larger than the corresponding impact (EFCR = 1923.20 gha), which determines a positive contribution to the ecological balance of the production system. To this result, it must be added the positive contribution generated by the bioproductivity of not productive areas (BCNP = 17.10 gha), which appears very small and the negative impact caused by the other farm activities (BCOF = 34.72 gha).
The ecological balance of the agricultural system showed a positive result of EBAG = 62.88 gha, indicating the capacity of this system to generate more resources than it consumes. This highlights the environmental sustainability of the farming phase.

4.2. Transport Phase

Unlike the agricultural phase, where demand and supply of natural capital are considered, only demand for environmental services can be assessed for the transport phase, as this activity does not make any natural capital available.
The ecological footprint of the transport phase accounts for EFTR = 349.43 and was assessed considering (Table 2): (i) the total quantity of tomatoes; (ii) the number of trips calculated taking into account trucks load capacity (28.5 tons); (iii) the distance from the cooperative headquarters to the tomatoes processing plant (back and forth).

4.3. Industrial Phase

To evaluate the tomato processing activity, information on the necessary inputs for the industrial process, the related energy consumption, and the emissions deriving from the packaging was considered. Regarding the impact of the packaging (both cans and bottles), the ecological footprint of the materials used, glass and aluminum, was calculated using the related embodied energy; these were multiplied by the weight of each package to obtain the ecological footprint for each type of packaging.
Table 3 shows the contribution of the single components to the overall impact of the industrial phase (EFIN = 1630.96 gha).
In addition, a small rate of bioproductivity related to the area where the processing plant is settled (BCIN = 6.02 gha) must be considered.

4.4. Supply Chain Ecological Balance

Once the assessment at each individual phase level was performed, it was possible, by combining the results, to evaluate the entire supply chain ecological balance. In this way, the final synthetic value of the ecological balance, reporting an environmental surplus or deficit, highlights a condition of sustainability or unsustainability of the analyzed system.
Table 4 summarizes the contribution of every single phase to the supply chain ecological balance (EBSC), which is =−1911.49 gha. The surplus of natural capital available from the agricultural phase is largely absorbed by the transport phase. Consequently, tomatoes arriving at the processing plant are already not sustainable. The industrial phase adds a further negative figure to the ecological balance, making the situation even worse.
Therefore, it is possible to conclude that while the agricultural phase is sustainable, the overall supply chain assessment shows a condition of high unsustainability.

5. Discussion

The results show that for an agri-food supply chain to be environmentally sustainable, in the strong sense, it must be characterized by an agricultural phase whose ecological balance has a sufficient biocapacity margin to “sustain” the environmental impacts of the downstream phases.
Therefore, a crucial aspect deserving special attention is understanding which factors influence crops BC and EF in the agricultural system. Previous studies based on the use of a similar methodology have, in fact, highlighted how crops might present different ecological balances [32,36] and that, at the same time, the same crop can show a highly variable environmental performance according to its productivity and diverse use of inputs [32]. In particular, with reference to tomato, this study reports a negative ecological balance (−0.85 gha/ha), while in the case of [36], the result was slightly positive (+0.17 gha/ha).
Another aspect to consider is that the positive ecological balance of the agricultural phase, obtained in this study, is given by considering not only tomatoes, which appear unsustainable as an individual crop, but the farming system taken as a whole. In fact, tomatoes’ negative impact is compensated by the bioproductivity of some other cultivations, such as leguminous and perennial crops, which positively contribute to the ecological balance. This situation is a consequence of the crop rotation adopted in the farming system, a technique that, as shown in other studies [40,41], improves soil productivity and reduces negative environmental effects.
Looking at the industrial tomatoes supply chain, the results of this work can be discussed in comparison to the outcomes of studies based on the LCA method.
Different studies were carried out using the LCA method to assess the environmental implication of tomato cultivation and processing, focusing on the evaluation of different categories like CO2 emissions, energy, and water consumption, and the use of pesticides and fertilizers related to the different phases of the production chain [42,43,44].
According to Del Borghi et al. (2014) [45], the highest environmental impact stages are cultivation and packaging. A similar result emerges from our study, where the agricultural phase has the highest impact (1958 gha) followed by the processing one (1631 gha). A different situation is reported by [46], where transport was the phase with the highest impact in terms of CO2 emissions, even if this result is due to the distance from the farm to the processing plant.
Generally, it should be noted that the ecological footprint of the downstream phases (transport and processing) and the agricultural phase are comparable. This implies that to make the industrial tomato supply chain sustainable, the farming system biocapacity should be approximately two times the corresponding impact, a quite hard condition to reach.
Hence, an effort to improve the supply chain’s environmental performance requires focusing on different key points.
In the agricultural phase, the main crop, the tomato, in our case, should be integrated into a crop mix characterized by the largest positive ecological balance. At the same time, particular attention should be devoted to not productive areas of the agricultural system, especially forests, to be increased as much as possible considering their contribution to biocapacity.
On the other hand, it is also necessary to consider the downstream phases, which must have the least possible impact. This can be achieved by reducing the distance to travel to reach the processing plant and/or using more environmentally efficient vehicles. Different solutions can be applied to reduce the large impact of the processing phase: the most effective are the implementation of energy efficiency measures for the production process, the installation of renewable energy production plants, mainly photovoltaic, and the adoption of low-impact packaging.

6. Conclusions and Political Implications

This work intends to propose a methodology for the assessment of environmental sustainability, using the agri-food chain of industrial tomatoes in a specific area of Italy as a case study. The aim was to understand if the carrying capacity of the agricultural system was able to support the environmental load of the entire supply chain. The theoretical approach adopted was the ecological footprint method, which compares the impacts of human activities to the supply of natural resources and offers the possibility to establish an ecological balance. When this balance reports a positive value, the activity does not lead to a loss of natural capital; it is then possible to name it sustainable.
Therefore, considering the results of this study, it emerges that the industrial tomato supply chain is not sustainable. At the same time, looking exclusively at the agricultural phase, the positive ecological balance highlights sustainability.
It follows that the ecological footprint method provides an effective synthetic indicator to describe the balance between supply and demand for natural resources. It can be applied at different levels of the supply chain to assess and likely certify the environmental sustainability for either the entire supply chain or its individual phases.
However, although there are several advantages linked to the proposed methodology, some limitations cannot be ignored, as pointed out in several studies, such as, for example, the availability of data and the simplification of the calculations [46,47].
Other limitations specific to the case study can be referred to as the assessment of the industrial phase, in which the emissions calculation was based on standard coefficients found in other studies, particularly regarding the impact of packaging. Furthermore, the last phase of the chain relating to the transport from the industry to the various retailers and the entire consumption phase, was not considered.
Despite these limitations, the ecological footprint overcomes the structural characteristics of the methodologies, such as LCA or carbon footprint, which focus only on the impact of production. These approaches, while not providing any indication of the supply of natural capital, disregard the intrinsic peculiarity of agriculture in supplying essential environmental services. Therefore, the above methods, while being very useful for comparing the impact of different processes and products, are unable to establish the sustainability of the activities within the agricultural ecosystem.
In conclusion, this study, beyond its limitations, demonstrates that when dealing with sustainability assessment in the agri-food sector it is necessary to adopt methods and tools that explicitly consider the specificity of agriculture.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, S.F.; Data curation, A.M. and M.N.; Formal analysis, I.M.L.P. and E.B.; Funding acquisition, A.M. and S.F.; Methodology, A.M. and S.F.; Writing—original draft, A.M. and E.B.; Writing—review and editing, A.M. and I.M.L.P. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research was funded whitin an agreement between Department of Economics, Engineering, Society and Business Organization, University of Tuscia (VT) and Calispa S.p.A. through the project “Enhancement of the industrial tomato chain through certification of environmental sustainability” signed the 10 May 2022.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

Due to privacy restrictions, research data are not available.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Sustainability 15 07846 g001 550
Figure 1. Localization of Production Area and Processing Plant.
Figure 1. Localization of Production Area and Processing Plant.
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Figure 2. Assessment of supply chain ecological balance.
Figure 2. Assessment of supply chain ecological balance.
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Table
Table 1. Ecological Balance of the agricultural phase.
Table 1. Ecological Balance of the agricultural phase.
CropArea (ha)BC (gha)EF (gha)
Tomato165.511074.251216.54
Durum wheat120.97333.96290.44
Leguminous159.7593.067.39
Other horticultural crops *15.3763.4067.99
Perennial crops20.53171.36121.76
Other cereals93.92267.67219.08
Total crop576.052003.701923.20
Not productive areasArea (ha)BC (gha)
Forest land0.060.13
Grazing land5.164.51
Water land4.561.51
Others6.4710.95
Total not productive areas16.2517.10
Other activities 34.72
Total agricultural phase592.302020.801957.92
Ecological Balance (EBAG) +62.88
* Fennel, pepper, melon, onion, turnip greens, asparagus.
Table
Table 2. Ecological footprint of transport phase.
Table 2. Ecological footprint of transport phase.
DataValue
Tomatoes (tons)13,240
Trips (number)465
Distance covered (km)380
EFTR (gha)349.43
Table
Table 3. Ecological Footprint of industrial phase.
Table 3. Ecological Footprint of industrial phase.
Impact SourceValue (gha)
Energy consumption292.30
Packaging1320.79
Other17.87
Total (EFIN)1630.96
Table
Table 4. Ecological Balance of the chain.
Table 4. Ecological Balance of the chain.
PhaseBC (gha)EF (gha)
Agricultural (AG)2020.801957.92
Transport (TR)---349.43
Industrial (IN)6.021630.96
Total2026.823938.31
Ecological Balance (EBSC)−1911.49
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Martella, A.; La Porta, I.M.; Nicastro, M.; Biagetti, E.; Franco, S. Ecological Balance of Agri-Food Supply Chains—The Case of the Industrial Tomato. Sustainability 2023, 15, 7846. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15107846

AMA Style

Martella A, La Porta IM, Nicastro M, Biagetti E, Franco S. Ecological Balance of Agri-Food Supply Chains—The Case of the Industrial Tomato. Sustainability. 2023; 15(10):7846. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15107846

Chicago/Turabian Style

Martella, Angelo, Ilenia Maria La Porta, Marco Nicastro, Elisa Biagetti, and Silvio Franco. 2023. "Ecological Balance of Agri-Food Supply Chains—The Case of the Industrial Tomato" Sustainability 15, no. 10: 7846. https://doi.org/10.3390/su15107846

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