Led by the Resource Innovation Institute (RII), the not-for-profit, public-private partnership, the Controlled Environment Agriculture Energy & Water Benchmarking Report: Establishing Preliminary Benchmarks is a deliverable to USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) under the Conservation Innovation Grant-funded project titled, Data-Driven Market Transformation for Efficient Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). You can download the report here.
The results of this thorough benchmarking:
- Validates the water savings and water quality potential of CEA, where it has been shown that water circularity strategies can result in greater than 90% water savings compared to common field farming benchmarks.
- Outlines that, unlike field farms, CEA facilities include processing, packing and storage steps, each requiring energy consumption.
- Determines that there is no “typical” CEA facility, and therefore determines a range of efficiency performance across differing facility sizes, production methods and business models.
- Demonstrates that CEA facilities improve their energy productivity and efficiency year over year as growers refine their operations, particularly with support from utilities and governments.
Grodan is excited that our customers participated in this important report, and looks forward to continuing to support efforts of nonprofit and government work examining potential benefits of CEA.
