Author Archives: Gordon Rogers

Assessment of life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from horticultural products

This Publicly Available Specification (PAS) contains requirements supplementary to PAS 2050 for the assessment of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the life-cycle of horticultural products.
The purpose of these supplementary requirements is to aid consistent application of the PAS 2050 to the horticulture sector by providing:

  • a horticultural focus for aspects of the PAS 2050 assessment where options are permitted;
  •  rules or assessment requirements that are directly relevant to the main sources of emissions from horticulture; and
  • clarity on how to apply specific elements of the PAS 2050 assessment within the horticultural sector.

PAS 2050-1 is provided for use in conjunction with PAS 2050 to provide an homologous method for the reliable, repeatable assessment of GHG emissions from the whole life cycle of horticultural products. However, the supplementary requirements provided in PAS 2050-1 relate only to the cradle-to-gate stages of the life cycle and for all subsequent stages (i.e. retail, use and end-of-life) the requirements of PAS 2050 apply.

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Note: PAS 2050 sets out generic requirements for undertaking a GHG emissions assessment, such as transport, energy use, data quality rules etc whilst PAS 2050-1 provides supplementary requirements and additional guidance on those elements that have been found to present particular difficulties in an horticultural context such as land use change and allocation.

Scoping study into climate change and climate variability

This scoping study includes a list of management tools currently available to agriculture for managing climate change and climate variability, on which horticultural industries might capitalize. The study also list how the Australian horticultural industry will be affected by climate change including:-

    •  Changes in frost frequency
    •  Damage from extreme events
    •  Increased, or changing pest and disease incidence
    •  Changes in time to harvest
    •  Changes in the suitability of cultivars
    •  Downgrading product quality
    •  Pollination difficulties for some crops
    •  Increased risk of spread and proliferation of soil borne diseases
    •  Increased irrigation demand
    •  Increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations will benefit productivity of most horticultural crops, although the extent of this benefit is unknown.

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