The buyers of Swiss vegetables want more sustainably produced vegetables. Vegetable growers in Geneva therefore use their own solar power. And another farmer uses his greenhouse in two ways: growing radishes and for solar energy production.
Perfect salad without soil, crunchy carrots without spots, or cucumbers in April, that is normal in the current vegetable aisles in the supermarkets. The Swiss vegetable producers specialized a lot the last years. Salads should be washed, carrots cooled immediately and cucumbers grown in greenhouses in the winter.
Vegetable production is expensive
The demands of the customers for high quality make the vegetable production more expensive. The trends in prepared, cut and pre-packaged salads increase the price too. Another result is the higher energy use. And since greenhouses heated with fossil fuels don't match the image of fresh vegetables producers increasingly use renewable energy.
Renewable energy
Purchasers put pressure on the producers too. For instance Coop wants greenhouses in the future only to be heated with renewable energy. In Hinwil, CO2 neutral cucumbers are grown with the waste heat from the neighbouring waste incineration plant. And similar projects are implemented in Wallis and East Switzerland.
Other vegetable producers use the heat from biogas, solar energy installations or heat their greenhouses with wood chips. A tomato producer in East Switzerland drilled 1,500 meters in the earth and uses geothermal energy. Yet the number of business that choose for these renewable energy options is still small. However that will change if the prices for fossil fuels will rise again, which the experts predict even despite the current low prices.
Source: lid.ch