How to Reduce the ‘Carbon Footprint’ of a Tomato

Grow it in a local warehouse using LEDs, a Purdue U. professor says. And: The tomatoes will probably TASTE better, too!

Why?

Cary Mitchell, a professor of horticulture, said the average tomato is shipped about 1,500 miles from warmer climates where they’re grown to cooler climates that cannot produce the fruit cost-effectively in the winter.

That journey is costly, however, because tomatoes are picked green and ripen during shipping, decreasing quality and flavor. The lengthy shipping distance also adds to the industry’s carbon footprint.

AND

Mitchell and doctoral student Celina Gómez experimented with light-emitting diodes, which are cooler and require far less energy than traditional high-pressure sodium lamps used in greenhouses.

They got the same yield – size and number of fruit – with high-pressure sodium lamps and LED towers, but the LEDs used about 25 percent of the energy of traditional lamps.

Source: http://electricalcontractor.com/?p=9937

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