Energy use and fossil CO2 emissions for the Canadian fruit and vegetable industries

The Fruit And Vegetable Energy (FAVE) model was developed to quantify the energy budget and fossil CO2 emissions in this paper. The energy terms considered were fieldwork, irrigation, on-farm cooling, farm building maintenance, off-farm transport, and N fertilizer supply, with an estimate of farm machinery supply energy integrated with the farm fieldwork energy CO2 emission intensity estimates. The 31 vegetable crops and 18 fruit crops identified in the socio-economic Canadian data base (CANSIM) were divided into six vegetable groups and five fruit groups, along with potatoes. The data provided by the 1996 Farm Energy Use Survey (FEUS) and the guidance provided by two grower focus groups were essential to the development of this model. Total energy use in Canada between 2007 and 2016 was 2.3 PJ by the vegetable industry and 2.32 PJ by the fruit industry. These included 0.77 PJ for fieldwork, 1.05 PJ for irrigation, 0.36 PJ for on-farm coolers, 0.67 PJ for farm building maintenance, 0.70 PJ for off-farm transport and 1.07 PJ for fertilizer supply. The FAVE model was used to determine the fossil CO2 emission intensities of 12 individual crops.