Page 139 - Ecuador's Banana Sector under Climate Change

chapter 5: the carbon footprint of ecuador’s banana
and the United Kingdom); Panama’s bananas (Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom); and Peru’s bananas (the Netherlands). Primary data were also collected from the plantations, while secondary data and emission factors were derived from several databases.
• Lescot (2012) has compiled four case studies relating to three different plants: plant A corresponds to Luske (2010), while there is no information (except for the final destination of Europe) regarding plants B and C, due to confidentiality issues.
Figure 42 illustrates the results in relation to these references and, for comparative purposes, includes those derived from this study, where the contribution from the packaging activities at plantations have been separately presented, according to the other evaluations. Two values are presented in the Svanes (2012) analysis: the Svanes I column in Figure 42 represents the cradle- to-gate result, while the Svanes II column represents the cradle-to-grave figure. With regard to Eitner et al., an average of the four plantations (Eitner I) and an average for Ecuador (Eitner II) are included. The results in relation to the work of Letscot are included in Figure 42 and include the stages up to either the RDC (Lescot BI) or on arrival at the European harbour (Lescot BII and C).
The results from this study are lower than those reported by Svanes (2012) for the entire banana value chain (1.25 versus 1.77 tonne CO2eq/tonne of bananas). The results for Ecuador from this study are also lower than those reported by Luske (2010) and Svanes (2012), which include all stages until the retailer stage (1.01 versus 1.12 and 1.37 tonne CO2eq/tonne of bananas, respectively) or
those results from the study by Lescot (2012) for the value chain up to the RDC stage (0.84 versus 0.93 tonne CO2eq/tonne of bananas). The results from this study, however, are higher than the values reported by Eitner et al. (2012) for all stages up to the RDC stage (0.70 tonne CO2eq/tonne and an average 0.65 tonne CO2eq/tonne of bananas from Ecuador).
3.3 Detailed analysis of mayor contributors
3.3.1 Banana cultivation on the farm
For further detailed information, Table 47 divides the carbon footprint associated with the farm into the activities involved in the cultivation of the banana and those associated with banana packaging, as in previous studies. It is evident that the results achieved in this study are in line with the figures of other authors.
The farms that were selected for this study were classified according to
two criteria: size (small, medium and large) and production system (organic and conventional). No significant differences were found regarding the former, where the variability among farms within the same category can be even higher than the divergences between farms of a different size. A significant difference (24 percent), however, resulted between the average organic and average conventional banana (Figure 43).
With regard to the cultivation activities of the banana, the main effects, in terms of global warming, are the CO2 emissions that are associated with the
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