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Supply chains for processed potato and tomato products in the United States will have enhanced resilience with planting adaptation strategies

Nature Food volume 2, pages 862–872 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Food systems are increasingly challenged to meet growing demand for specialty crops due to the effects of climate change and increased competition for resources. Here, we apply an integrated methodology that includes climate, crop, economic and life cycle assessment models to US potato and tomato supply chains. We find that supply chains for two popular processed products in the United States, French fries and pasta sauce, will be remarkably resilient, through planting adaptation strategies that avoid higher temperatures. Land and water footprints will decline over time due to higher yields, and greenhouse gas emissions can be mitigated by waste reduction and process modification. Our integrated methodology can be applied to other crops, health-based consumer scenarios (fresh versus processed) and geographies, thereby informing decision-making throughout supply chains. Employing such methods will be essential as food systems are forced to adapt and transform to become carbon neutral due to the imperatives of climate change.

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Fig. 1: Crop yield projection methodology.
Fig. 2: US potatoes.
Fig. 3: US tomatoes.
Fig. 4: Environmental footprints.
Fig. 5: Mitigation options.

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Data availability

Source data are provided with this paper. All other data used in this paper are freely available upon request from the corresponding author.

Code availability

All code utilized in this paper are freely available upon request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

Funding was supplied by USDA NIFA award no. 2017-68002-26789. T.B.S. and K.W. received additional support from the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets. We acknowledge the helpful input received from the project’s advisory committee, which includes S. Alvarez, H. Giclas, K. Johnson, K. Morgan, J. McFerran, S. Mostoja, W. Reinhardt-Kapsak, S. Sambhav, L. Scandurra, D. Sonke, V. Verlage and K. Walsh.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Senthold Asseng

    Present address: Department of Life Science Engineering, Technical University of Munich, Freising, Germany

  2. Morven McLean

    Present address: Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations, St. Louis, MO, USA

  3. Dan Sonke

    Present address: Blue Diamond Growers, Sacramento, CA, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Agriculture & Food Systems Institute, Washington DC, USA

    David Gustafson, Morven McLean & Layla Tarar

  2. Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Senthold Asseng, Gerrit Hoogenboom, Chuang Zhao, Clyde Fraisse & Liujun Xiao

  3. WAEES, Columbia, MO, USA

    John Kruse, Pon Intarapapong & Marc Rosenbohm

  4. University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA

    Greg Thoma, Marty Matlock & Ranjan Parajuli

  5. University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA

    Kaiyu Guan, Yan Li & Genghong Wu

  6. Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

    Kirti Rajagopalan, Claudio Stöckle, Chad Kruger & Roger Leroy Nelson

  7. International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC, USA

    Timothy B. Sulser & Keith Wiebe

  8. Department of Agronomy, University of Córdoba, Córdoba, Spain

    Carmen Gimenez

  9. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Tina Karimi

  10. Natural Resources Conservation Service, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington DC, USA

    Elizabeth Marshall

  11. Wageningen Plant Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands

    Annette Pronk & Frits van Evert

  12. Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA

    Rubí Raymundo

  13. Economic Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington DC, USA

    Anne A. Riddle

  14. Campbell Soup, Davis, CA, USA

    Dan Sonke

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  1. David Gustafson
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Contributions

D.G. served as the convening lead author and co-led the overall project with S.A., who led the crop modelling team (C.S., K.R., C.G., T.K., Y.L., K.G., E.M., R.L.N., A.P., R.R., A.A.R., F.v.E., G.W., L.X. and C.Z.) and served as a lead author on the text. J.K. led the economic modelling team (P.I. and M.R.) and served as a lead author on the text. G.T. led the LCA modelling team (R.P. and D.G.) and served as a lead author on the text. C.F. served as a project co-lead after the departure of S.A. and co-led the extension component of the project with C.K. G.H., M. Matlock, M. McLean, T.B.S. and K.W. served as internal project advisors and as co-editors of the text. D.S. served on the project advisory committee and provided critical data to the LCA modelling for processed tomato supply chains. L.T. led communications for the project and created the figures.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Gustafson.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Food thanks Pauline Scheelbeek, Rachel Schattman, Ali Mohammadi, Jing Wang and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 US Potato and Tomato Supply Chains.

The pie charts (a potatoes, b tomatoes) show the relative amounts of different foods sourced from potatoes and tomatoes in the United States. The bar charts show the relative environmental footprints (c greenhouse gas emissions, d land use, e water use) of potatoes and tomatoes at harvest, using three alternative life cycle assessment (LCA) functional units: mass, caloric content, and nutrient density.

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Gustafson, D., Asseng, S., Kruse, J. et al. Supply chains for processed potato and tomato products in the United States will have enhanced resilience with planting adaptation strategies. Nat Food 2, 862–872 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00383-w

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