Page 123 - Ecuador's Banana Sector under Climate Change

chapter 5: the carbon footprint of ecuador’s banana
infrastructure for irrigation and cable transportation has a long lifespan. For this reason, it has been excluded from the calculations, since its contribution to the evaluation is expected to be negligible.
The measurements of two direct GHG emissions are excluded and, therefore, need to be calculated. These are:
• emissions that relate to fuel combustion (e.g. agricultural machinery, small plane for fumigation, lack of electrical pumps): the emission factors reported by Luske (2010) have been applied (2.68 kg CO2eq/l diesel and 2.33 kg CO2eq/l petrol.
• N2O emissions relating to fertilization and the degradation of organic residues: the IPCC guidelines were adapted in this study to tropical soils.
The provision of materials (in particular, fertilizers36 and pesticides) has been included, since the great majority derive from Europe, according to one of the main distributors (Syngenta) and data from Ecuador’s national statistics.37 Due to the lack of more detailed information, it is assumed that the average distance covered by a cargo ship from Ecuador for all products is 11 000 km.
2.2 Transportation off-farm
a) Transport from the plantation to the collection centre
On some farms in Ecuador, the packaged fruit leaves the plantation in a non- refrigerated truck for transport to a collection centre before it is delivered to the port for export. According to the farmers interviewed within the proximity criteria, there are six collection centres (Figure 37): Pasaje in El Oro Province (A), Guayas Province (B), Azuay Province (C), Machala in El Oro Province (D), Guayas Province (E) and Quevedo in Los Ríos Province (F). The associated GHG emissions will depend on the distance and the size and load of the truck used (Table 26).
b) Collection centre
At the collection centre, the boxes are palletized (48 boxes per pallet). Pallets are assumed to be reused 20 times (FAO, 2013). In addition, four cardboard corners and 40 metres (m) of polypropylene strapping bands are used to secure the boxes on the pallet. One banana box is estimated to be damaged during each boarding activity (i.e. approximately 10 pallets), representing 0.20 percent of loss.
Several sources have been used for the calculation of energy use at the collection centre (Table 27), where an average facility (Martínez, 2009) has been considered. The facility includes a non-refrigerated industrial unit with 200 m2 of surface and an annual capacity of 2 000 tonnes of banana without a mechanical aeration system.
Table 28 summarizes the material and energy inputs and outputs that repesent this stage. These are expressed as per tonne of bananas entering the collection centre.
36 Except those that are naturally produced, such as compost, poultry manure, molasses and castor-oil plant flour
37 See http://www.portal.bce.fin.ec/vto_bueno/seguridad/ComercioExteriorEst.jsp
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