Journal of Cleaner Production 73 (2014) 269e274

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

The environmental effects of seasonal food purchase: a raspberry case

study
Chris Foster a, *, Catarina Guben a, Mark Holmes b, Jeremy Wiltshire b, Sarah Wynn b
a
b

EuGeos Limited, UK
ADAS, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 28 March 2013
Received in revised form
6 December 2013
Accepted 19 December 2013
Available online 17 January 2014

The environmental effects of seasonal food supply have been explored through a Life Cycle Assessment
(LCA) study of raspberries supplied to UK consumers at different times of year. Supply of raspberries at
different times of the year draws on different production systems and locations. Despite that, the results
of this LCA, based on data from individual producers, reveal relatively small differences in impacts for
different times of supply, except in the case of the water footprint measures. LCIA results are very
sensitive to fruit yield. So in this case, yield and agricultural practice appear stronger drivers of the
environmental burden of food production than is time of supply. In such situations a strong focus on
seasonality in sustainable food provisioning is unlikely to deliver large environmental benets. Using
LCA to establish what benets might be available from a more general shift to seasonal food consumption, often advocated as more sustainable, will require a multi-product approach. Such an
approach could take current food consumption patterns or environmental targets as its starting point.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Seasonal
Fruit
Seasonal food
Raspberry
LCA

1. Introduction

1.1. Seasonal food

As urbanisation progressed in the second half of the 20th Century and the agricultural workforce shrank, so Western European
citizens disengaged from food production, losing their connection
with its seasonal patterns. From the 1960s onwards, seasonal
variation in the availability of certain foods reduced, leading to the
commonly-described position of all-year-round availability for
many foods. Recently, interest in seasonal foods has been resurgent; Dibb et al. (2006) state that two-thirds of people in the UK are
now taking steps to buy seasonally. This trend has various drivers
but e as Dibb et al.s title suggests e some see implications for the
environment in it. In line with this, advice on sustainable diet
often advocates consumption of seasonal food. Seeking additional
evidence relevant to such recommendations, the UKs Department
of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs commissioned a
research project exploring the environmental implications of seasonal food purchasing (DEFRA research project FO0412). This paper
reports some ndings of the project, focussing on environmental
implications of seasonal food supply explored through a raspberry
LCA case study.

A review of literature and consumer research demonstrated that

clearly identifying seasonal food is in fact quite difcult. Few
commentators take the trouble to dene the term seasonal, while
consumer research found that UK consumers have only a vague
denition of seasonal food. In essence very different denitions
and perceptions of what is seasonal are applied by different parties
(Brooks and Foster, 2011). To inform the project noted above, two
working denitions of seasonal food were used e one derived from
discussions with industry and policy makers and one informed by
consumer research reported in ADAS et al. (2012). The rst was a
production-oriented or global denition: food that is outdoor
grown or produced during the natural growing/production period
for the country or region where it is produced. It need not necessarily be consumed locally to where it is grown.1 The second was a
consumer-oriented, more local denition: food that is produced
and consumed in the same climatic zone, e.g. UK, without high
energy use for climate modication such as heated glasshouses or
high energy use cold storage. Inevitably, these denitions are
themselves open to interpretation. The LCA research on which this
article draws covered a number of food items meeting one or the
other (or both) of these denitions.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: chrisf@eugeos.co.uk, c.foster@manchester.ac.uk, chris.foster@
mbs.ac.uk (C. Foster).
0959-6526/$ e see front matter 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2013.12.077

This was originally suggested in Defras project specication.

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C. Foster et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 73 (2014) 269e274

1.2. Food, seasonality and the environment

The timing of agricultural activities in any one place can change
the effects of those activities on the wider environment, even if the
activities remain the same. Thus changing the timing of pesticide
applications can result in increased or reduced effects on non-pest
susceptible species, simply because these will be present in
different numbers, variety and development stage; moving nitrogen fertiliser applications to times of higher rainfall will likely lead
to higher leaching rates; the presence of crop canopy in times of
higher rainfall might mitigate soil erosion. So if a crops planting-toharvest cycle is moved earlier or later in the year and fertiliser and/
or pesticide applications moved in step, then the total effects on the
environment can change.
As food production for supply in a certain place is shifted further
away in time from the natural, or normal time of production
there, so one or both of two additional changes occurs: either the
nature of the producing activity changes (e.g. through the use of
protected growing environments) or the place of production
changes (change can include division, as in the case reported
below). Furthermore, preservation and storage allow the time of
production and the time of supply to be separated, introducing
further exibility into the supply system. Finally of course, consumers also have access to preservation and storage, so can separate the time of supply from the moment of consumption.
Each of these adjustments changes the interaction between the
food system and the natural environment surrounding it: different
production systems for the same basic foodstuff have different
yields and require different inputs, almost all preservation techniques require energy inputs, as does cold storage. The fact that
these adjustments can be made at different points in a generic food
production-consumption system is a strong indicator that life cycle
assessment will be an effective tool to explore their environmental
implications.
1.3. LCA and seasonality
While the need to consider the whole food productionconsumption system favours the application of LCA in this context,
care is needed because of the way temporality is handled within LCA.
For agricultural products the product system is normally dened as a
full annual (sometimes multi-annual) cycle and the life cycle inventory (LCI) integrates emissions occurring throughout that cycle,
dividing them equally among the total harvest. Thus few life cycle
analyses of food products or systems explicitly explore seasonality.
When LCA studies refer to seasonality, the term is associated e
implicitly or explicitly e with a crops natural growing season and
its cropping period, thus with its availability for fresh consumption.
Some LCAs examine seasonal variation in impacts more explicitly,
for example Williams et al. (2009). This and other studies (Blanke
2007; Blanke and Burdick, 2005, 2007, Hospido et al., 2009; Jones,
2006; Mil i Canals et al., 2007; Saunders et al., 2006) consider
seasonality in the context of the supply of fresh produce to consumers in Northern Europe all year round e and thus closely connected to the local vs. global or food miles debate.
Examination of this literature highlights some issues that
require attention if seasonal effects on the environmental impacts
of food supply are to be separated from other factors that may differ
between supply systems but are not directly linked to seasonality.
For example, a review by Evans (2014) found the range of specic
energy use (energy use per volume) in cold stores in the UK alone to
be very wide for each temperature regime studied e with an eightfold difference between the most and least efcient. Blanke and
Burdick (2005), Mil i Canals et al. (2007), Saunders et al. (2006),
Sim et al. (2007) and Williams et al. (2009) all report LCAs of

Fig. 1. UK raspberry supply 2007.

Sources: Defra horticultural statistics, UK Trade statistics.

apples; it is clear from these that the impacts associated with the
different stages of the apple life cycle are of similar order of
magnitude, a situation that may then reasonably be anticipated for
other top-fruit. Differences in post-harvest technology, arising
coincidentally, may therefore outweigh differences driven by the
season of production. In cases where supply at a particular time of
year requires storage, the scale of product loss or degradation
during storage must be accounted for. The degree of geographical
resolution embedded in impact assessment (LCIA) methods (few of
which exist in regionalised form) may also limit the extent to which
LCA can inform about the environmental effects of seasonal variation in food supply when that variation involves production in
different places.
2. Methods
2.1. Scope
The aim of the research was to explore the environmental implications of upstream changes that arise as supply of particular
foodstuffs progresses through the year. Therefore a selection of
individual foods was studied, rather than a sequence of baskets.
Here the raspberry case study is reported to illustrate how environmental impacts vary across the year for one food consumed in
the UK. Clearly at a certain time of year raspberries are in-season
in the UK, at other times they are not. The project considered only
the effect of changing the times of production and supply in the
system as far as delivery to the food retailer. In effect, we equate
(reecting mainstream economics and consumer data) consumption with purchase, and purchase with supply to the retailer. This
embodies a simplication: it is possible that consumers store foods
for extended periods after purchasing them. The environmental
implications of this, if it occurs, were not considered in the LCA; it
would make food consumption less seasonal than statistics
would lead us to believe it is. Some of the volume captured by this
data is supplied to commercial buyers (the foodservice sector or
institutions) rather than nal consumers, of course. This is still
purchase, however, and there seems to be no reason to exclude it.
Fig. 1 shows how UK supply of raspberries changes through the
year in volume and by source (data compiled from UK production2
and import3 statistics with quantity, in tonnes, as the y-axis which

2
Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Horticultural Statistics:
www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/foodfarm/landuselivestock/bhs/.
3
HM Revenue & Customs Trade Statistics: https://www.uktradeinfo.com/Pages/
Home.aspx.

C. Foster et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 73 (2014) 269e274

is not shown) There is scarcely competition between local production e certainly seasonal according to the consumer-oriented
denition above e and imports, which are seasonal only according to the global denition; rather imports complement local
produce in an overall supply pattern. To gain some insight into the
environmental implications of this supply pattern an LCA of raspberries was conducted. This covered 3 functional units:
A. 1 kg raspberries delivered fresh to a supermarkets retail distribution centre (RDC) in May
B. 1 kg raspberries delivered fresh to a RDC in July
C. 1 kg raspberries delivered frozen to a RDC in November

271

2.2. Boundaries
The product systems incorporated production of fertilisers,
canes, packaging, fuels and all other inputs. Production of material
for polytunnels was included, but other capital equipment was
excluded so that the calculations of global warming potential were
compliant with PAS 2050:2008, which was the most recent version
of that standard at the time the work was carried out. For the
production system in B & C, an additional year of operation without
any crop production was included as an allowance for cane production, for which direct data were unavailable.
2.3. Data

Given the data underlying Fig. 1, an appropriate product system

for A involves production in Southern Spain. In a production system common there, raspberries are grown on an annual basis in
elds that are covered for the whole season with Spanish tunnels. The ground is prepared each year and beds then formed. The
planting material (canes) is produced in the UK or Netherlands
and transported to the producing site in chilled lorries. The canes
are kept for 3e4 weeks in a cold store prior to planting, then
planted directly through plastic into the pre-prepared beds. Fertilisers are applied through drip irrigation: nitrogen as ammonium
nitrate or potassium nitrate. Water for irrigation is abstracted from
an aquifer. Harvesting occurs by hand with the fruit then transported directly to the packhouse; average yield is 8 tonnes
marketable fruit per ha. (FAOSTAT 2009) In the packhouse the fruit
is graded and cleaned, before being placed into punnets with a
plastic lm lid. Punnets are cooled in a cold store prior to export in
refrigerated trucks which travel 2,500 km from Spain to the UK.
For B and C production in the UK is clearly appropriate. a typical
production system is located in the east of England, on canes
grown for seven years in elds covered with polytunnels during
fruiting. In this case in the rst year the ground is prepared, beds
formed and soil sterilised (e.g. with chloropicrin). The canes are
produced on a separate farm, cold stored prior to planting, then
planted directly through plastic into the pre-prepared beds. On an
annual basis (for seven croppings) fertilisers are applied through
drip irrigation including nitrogen fertiliser as ammonium nitrate
or potassium nitrate. Irrigation uses water from an aquifer. Fruit is
hand-harvested then transported directly to the packhouse. Yield
averages 12t marketable fruit per hectare per year for the seven
cropping years. In the packhouse the fruit is graded and cleaned,
before being placed into punnets with a plastic lm lid. Punnets
are cooled in a cold store prior to distribution in refrigerated
trucks. At the end of the season the soil between the beds is
pulverised to reduce compaction. At the end of the seven years the
crop is grubbed out, the ground sub-soiled and the plastic rolled
up and recycled.
These are commonly-encountered production techniques producing for the UK supply pattern, and individual producers
employing them provided complete or partial operating data for
use in the project (see next section).
In the case of C, Fig. 1 indicates that there is little e although not
zero e supply from primary producers in November. Supply of
frozen raspberries originally produced in the UK production system
described for B was included to investigate the signicance of
adding storage alone to one of the production systems already
studies. An alternative mechanism for supply of raspberries to the
UK market in November would involve import by air of fresh fruit
produced overseas, probably North America on the basis of Fig. 1.
We had no access to data characterising raspberry production in
North America and so this possible fourth case was not included.
Frozen and fresh raspberries may indeed not be considered as
substitutable products by purchasers.

Primary data from individual operating locations were used to

characterise agricultural operations, with expert consultation used
to ll data gaps. Background data to represent production of inputs
such as fertilisers, fuel and polyethylene lm were taken from the
ecoinvent database v2 (www.ecoinvent.ch). Data characterising
outdoor production of raspberry canes in the UK were developed by
the research team, based on the data provided for raspberry fruit
production outdoors in the UK and advice from a horticultural
expert on likely per ha yields. Methane and nitrous oxide emissions, where they arose, were calculated using the method set out
in the IPCCs (2006) Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. This aligned the method with PAS 2050:2008. The water
footprint of a primary crop is calculated as the ratio of volume of
water consumed for crop production to the crop yield. The Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations CROPWAT tool (FAO,
2010a) was used to estimate volumes of rain and irrigation water
evaporated in the eld during production: the green and blue water
footprint. As input into this model, climate data was taken from the
CLIMWAT database (FAO, 2010b), rened with local data wherever
possible. To calculate grey water footprint and to enable calculation
of eutrophication potentials, nitrate leached to water was estimated
using the ADAS Nitcat (Lord, 1992 and subsequent revisions) eldscale nitrate leaching model, with data specic for each location.
Where the model was deemed inappropriate for the growing
conditions or crops, estimates of leached nitrate were obtained
from the literature.
A single set of data, from one of the operating locations, was
used to characterise all packhouse operations and packaging; a loss
rate of 1% in the packhouse was assumed.
A dataset for chilling and short-term cold storage of soft fruit
was developed to characterise packhouse operations and storage
prior to transhipment either to the RDC or to a long-term coldstorage location. This was based on data for annual operation
provided by one business participating in the study. To create an
appropriate dataset for an equivalent operation in Spain, the source
of electricity used was changed from the UK grid to the Spanish
one; energy consumption was assumed to be the same in both
locations e i.e. any additional cooling energy required in the
warmer climate of Spain was ignored. A dataset characterising
frozen storage was also developed, encompassing energy use and
refrigerant loss and accounting for the burdens of providing a unit
volume of cold storage capacity for a unit time; energy use in cold
stores was taken from a review of UK facilities (Evans, n.d.); a
mixture of gases (the constituents of R404A in the appropriate
proportions and NH3) was used to represent emissions to air,
reecting the most widely-used refrigerants, while actual data for
refrigerant use (assumed equal to losses over a full year) were
supplied by the raspberry packer. In the survey of energy use in cold
stores, Evans (2014) found the range of specic energy use within
each temperature regime to be much greater than differences between the different temperature regimes (i.e. frozen and

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C. Foster et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 73 (2014) 269e274

chilled). Because most LCA results for food products relate to a

unit mass of product rather than volume (the factor to which cold
store energy consumption is typically normalised for reporting
purposes), gures for mass of product per unit of storage volume
were taken from Brunel University (2009) to calculate the cold
storage volume needed for 1 kg raspberries. Finally, a dataset for
the unit operation of road transport in refrigerated trucks was
developed using values for fuel consumption, vehicle utilisation
and refrigerant loss given by Brunel University (2009); emissions
per unit of fuel used were taken from ecoinvent v2.1 (Spielmann
et al., 2007).
2.4. Impact assessment
Impact assessment was conducted for environmental categories
deemed relevant to the project. Category and impact assessment
method selection were also guided by a requirement for compatibility with results from previous LCAs of UK agricultural commodities, particularly those produced by Williams et al. (2009).
Therefore, CML midpoint methods (Guine, 2002) were used for
the categories global warming, eutrophication, acidication and
photochemical oxidation. In addition agricultural land occupancy
was reported in units of m2 yr. (the result obtained by simply
adding all land occupation of all classes in the inventory), as were
the unweighted water footprint (to the method described by
Hoekstra and Chapagain, 2008); weighted water footprint (using a
method very similar to that outlined by Ridoutt and Pster (2010)
whereby a water stress characterisation factor for producing locations was introduced through the use of a water stress index (WSI,
Pster et al., 2009) to weight the water use according to the degree of water stress at the place of use) and environmental impact
quotient (EIQ, Kovach et al., 1992) of pesticides used. This last
method is based on average effects, and is neither geographicallynor temporally-sensitive. Regionalised LCIA methods are available
for eutrophication and acidication, but were not used here
because other factors, noted above, drove LCIA method selection.
3. Results
The impact assessment results are shown in Table 1.
Sensitivity analysis was undertaken to assess the effect on the
LCIA results of raspberry cane yield (no. Per ha) for case A and of
cold-store operating parameters for case C. Selected results are
shown in Table 2 (below). Results for impact categories driven
strongly by horticultural process parameters (for example, land
occupation, global warming) are, as expected, highly sensitive to
product yield. Categories to which transport process emissions
contribute more (notably acidication) are of course less sensitive
to this factor. Sensitivity to other parameters, such as cold-store

efciency, was found to be weaker than to those included in

Table 2. For cold storage, small variations in energy consumption
per unit volume are less signicant inuences on overall LCA results than the nature of the refrigerant used and assumed loss rates
for the more environmentally-signicant refrigerants.

4. Discussion
The results in Table 1 represent the progression of the environmental impacts associated with supply of raspberries through
the year. Because food at one time of the year is not, for many
consumers, substitutable for food at another, while it is reasonable
to reect on the changes in LCIA results between one case and
another, the three cases cannot really be compared as alternatives.
The differences between the LCIA results obtained for these
particular cases of raspberry supply at three points in the year are
relatively small, except for the water footprint measures. The fact
that both canes and fruit are subject to long-distance refrigerated
transport is a signicant factor behind the higher acidication and
abiotic depletion values obtained for raspberries delivered fresh in
May (A); for example product transport accounts for 35% of the
acidication potential for A but 18% of the acidication potential for
B. The close similarity between the EIQ values obtained partly results from the use of expert consultation to ll data gaps; results
obtained for strawberries within the same project (for which the
pesticide use data was of higher quality) suggest that differences in
soil sterilant application rates and frequencies can have a signicant inuence on this indicator. It is notable that the weighted
water footprint measure is the one LCIA method applied here
which is sensitive to location and is the one for which the differences between the three cases is largest.
For impact categories other than water, likely (e.g. year-to-year)
variations in fruit yield and cane yield could give rise to variations
in the results obtained for one particular case greater than the
differences between the different cases shown in Table 1.
N2O emissions from horticulture contribute a large proportion
of the GWP: 75% for A and more than 90% for B and C. However, in
this project the calculation of N2O emissions from soil following the
incorporation of crop residues both in the UK or overseas was
highly problematic. The IPCC 2006 method using the tier 1
approach is complex and uses many default values for specic crops
or crop groups. A large number of crops are not represented in the
IPCC method, therefore default data relevant to several of the
products considered in this project e including raspberries e were
not available. Data for another crop product were used as a proxy,
but this introduces a further element of uncertainty.
The production of polyethylene contributes some 25% of the
abiotic depletion potential in A. Tunnels account for the majority of
the polyethylene in this case. While there is some uncertainty about

Table 1
LCIA results, raspberries in the UK at different times of year.
Impact category

GWP100 (kg CO2 eq)

Water footprint (WF) (m3 Virtual water)
Weighted WF (m3 Virtual water)
Agricultural fruit-growing land occupation (m2 yr)
Pesticide hazard indicator E.I.Q.
Abiotic depletion (kg antimony eq.)
Photochemical oxidation e high NOx (kg ethylene eq.)
Acidication e (kg SO2 eq.)
Eutrophication (kg PO4 eq.)

Product system
A. Raspberries, fresh
at UK RDC in May

B. Raspberries fresh at
UK RDC in July

C. Raspberries frozen at
UK RDC in November

7.3
2.7
2.7
1.1
0.3
0.01
0.0004
0.01
0.005

7.4
1.3
0.09
1.2
0.3
0.004
0.0001
0.003
0.004

7.7
1.3
0.09
1.2
0.3
0.006
0.0002
0.004
0.004

C. Foster et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 73 (2014) 269e274

273

Table 2
Sensitivity analysis results.
Impact category

GWP100 (kg CO2 eq)

Water footprint (WF)
(m3 Virtual water)
Weighted WF
(m3 Virtual water)
Agricultural fruitgrowing land
occupation (m2 .yr)
Pesticide hazard
indicator E.I.Q.
Abiotic depletion
(kg antimony eq)
Photochemical
oxidation e high
NOx (kg ethylene eq.)
Acidication e
(kg SO2 eq.)
Eutrophication
(kg PO4 eq.)

Product system
A. Raspberries,
fresh at UK
RDC in May
(base)

A1. Raspberries,
fresh at UK
RDC in May,
fruit yield 10%

A2. Raspberries
fresh at UK RDC
in May, planting
material (canes)
yield 30%

B. Raspberries
fresh at UK
RDC in July

B1. Raspberries fresh

at UK RDC in July,
fruit yield 10%

C. Raspberries
frozen at UK
RDC in November

C1. Raspberries frozen

at UK RDC in
November, maximal
cold-store occupancy

7.3
2.7

5.7
Not calculated

6.0
Not calculated

7.4
1.3

6.7
Not calculated

7.7
1.3

7.5
Not calculated

2.7

Not calculated

Not calculated

0.09

Not calculated

0.09

Not calculated

1.1

1.0

1.0

1.2

1.1

1.2

1.2

0.3

0.3

0.3

0.3

0.3

0.3

0.3

0.01

0.01

0.01

0.004

0.004

0.006

0.005

0.0004

0.0004

0.0004

0.0001

0.0001

0.0002

0.0002

0.01

0.008

0.009

0.003

0.003

0.004

0.003

0.005

0.004

0.005

0.004

0.003

0.004

0.003

the fate and longevity of the material used for these tunnels in
practice, extending the materials life and recycling it when it is no
longer useable are clearly desirable.
In case C (frozen raspberries supplied in November) no allowance was made for loss or spoilage during cold storage. Such losses
increase the impacts associated with supplied product but no
relevant data for loss rates were available when the work was
conducted. Recent work by WRAP (Terry et al., 2011) provides an
estimate of 2e3% losses of fresh raspberries in packing and in retail
stores, but provides no estimate for losses of packed fruit consigned
to frozen storage. The loss rates found for packing are similar to
those used in this study.
5. Conclusions
An LCA has been completed of a soft fruit supplied in the UK at
three different times of the year. Here we draw some tentative
conclusions based on the results of this LCA.
The impact assessment results obtained show relatively small
shifts as the time of supply progresses through the year, perhaps
surprising in light of the operational differences between the
supply systems. The inuence on environmental impact of the
place of production shows through strongly in the weighted water
footprint. This impact assessment method has, of course, locationsensitivity built into it; it may be that if regionalised methods had
been used for other categories (notably eutrophication), the inuence of place would have shown in those too.
Comparing the results obtained for the different cases with the
results of the sensitivity analysis suggests that, for raspberries at
least, yield and agricultural practice are stronger drivers of the
environmental burden of food production than is time of supply. In
such situations, it seems that a strong focus on seasonality in
sustainable food provisioning is unlikely e by itself e to deliver
large environmental benets.
That conclusion must be recognised as provisional because of the
nature of the LCAs undertaken here e based on particular examples
of production rather than statistically-representative datasets for
production at certain times of the year, employing modelled data for
emissions and LCIA methods without regional sensitivity to explore

the effects of emissions which arise in different places at different

times of the year. Such reservations about LCA method aside, the
literature review and study design highlighted challenges facing any
assessment of the environmental effects of a shift towards seasonal
food consumption. If such a shift occurred at any signicant scale, it
would presumably involve a complex adjustment of food purchasing
and consumption patterns. The method used in this work precluded
consideration of the environmental consequences of seasonallychanging consumption patterns. Understanding the environmental implications of such patterns remains a desirable aim. Future
work should look beyond single food items. An important rst step
in such work would be to draw on food purchasing statistics to
establish how consumers food purchases actually vary through the
year; month-by-month results from the UKs National Food Survey
represent such a source (Ofce of National Statistics). In setting up
scenarios that might be used as realistic alternatives to existing
patterns that might be revealed in such statistics, account must be
taken of differences in understandings of seasonal food, modern
health norms (e.g. 5-a-day) and 21st-century consumer expectations.4 Established or desirable environmental goals should also be
considered in any such scenario-based LCA study; such a study
might then try to build year-long consumption patterns that meet
both modern health norms and environmental targets while
incorporating seasonal variation.
References
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Blanke, M.M., Burdick, B., 2007. Imported versus home-grown apples: LCA, food
miles and energy balance. In: Proceedings of the 5th International Conference
LCA in Foods (25e26 April 2007, Gothenburg, Sweden), pp. 117e120.

4
For a discussion of the co-evolution of consumer expectations and food products, see Foster et al. (2012) or Freidberg (2009).

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Brooks, M., Foster, C., Holme, s M., Wiltshire, J., 2011. Does consuming seasonal
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