Environmental impact of strawberry production in Italy and Switzerland with different cultivation practices.

In this study, the environmental impact of strawberry production in Italy and Switzerland was evaluated using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. The main differences between the two countries are the cultivation practices: crop cycle duration (1 year in Switzerland and 2 or 3 years in Italy), soil management and cultivation in open and protected fields. For all the environmental impact categories evaluated with LCA, strawberry production in Switzerland shows higher impacts respect to the Italian production. The impact reduction related to the Italian production in open fields without soil sterilisation ranges from 96% (for photochemical oxidant formation) to 35% (for freshwater eutrophication). For Swiss production, soil sterilisation is by far the main environmental hotspot for all the evaluated environmental effects except for toxicity-related impact categories and for resources consumption (i.e. manufacturing, maintenance and disposal of tunnel). Conversely, the main hotspot in Italy differs depending on the considered categories. Moreover, the 3-years cycle duration has a higher impact respect to the 2-years one because of the low yield in the third year that worsens the outcomes. Finally, sensitivity and uncertainty analysis were performed. The environmental results are deeply affected by yield variation and only slightly by changes in the life span of the tunnels while the uncertainty related to the selection of the data source, the model imprecision, and the variability of data does not affect significantly the results, except for the toxicity-related impact categories.

Narrow-Track Agricultural Tractors: A Survey on the Load of the Hand-Operated Foldable Rollbar.

To protect the driver in case of a tractor overturn, narrow-track tractors (used in vineyards and orchards) can be equipped with a rollover protective structure (ROPS) consisting of a two-pillar front-mounted foldable rollbar. The transition from the horizontal (rest) to the vertical (protection) position of this ROPS is performed manually by the driver. In addition to the time spent performing this task many times each day, a moderate physical load is required, given that these rollbars often have a mass of some tens of kilograms. In practice, neglect and poor attention to safety lead to the foldable rollbar remaining continuously in the rest position rather than being moved to the vertical (protection) position. Several rollover accidents have been fatal for the driver because the tractor, although equipped with a two-pillar front-mounted ROPS, had the rollbar in the horizontal position at the time of the event, thus assuring no protection to the driver. This issue is quite serious. To remove at least one of the problems for the proper management of this type of ROPS, the OECD has recently updated its Code 6 by introducing an optional test addressing the manual handling of front-mounted rollbars, providing a maximum load of 100 N. Several tests were conducted on new rollbars to ascertain the accuracy of this limit. The 100 N value was generally exceeded, which is cause for criticism. Indeed, a more appropriate reference for manual handling in this case would be the higher loads (up to 250 N) already provided by other standards for non-continuous tasks.