Environmental Impact of Different Business Models: An {LCA} Study of Fresh Tomato Production in Italy

This paper aims to define and measure the environmental impacts associated with three distinct industry techniques used in the production of fresh tomatoes, from planting to harvesting. A comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is conducted to evaluate the environmental performance of producing one kilogram of fresh processing tomatoes. The study includes three Italian companies representing different Business Models: standard production, integrated production, and precision farming. The impact evaluation method used is ReCiPe, at both midpoint and endpoint levels. The results reveal that the adoption of advanced technology, such as precision farming, in managing the agricultural production of fresh tomatoes leads to a significant reduction in environmental impacts across all categories analyzed. Interestingly, the largest contribution to climate-changing gases comes from the use of fertilizers. Precision farming demonstrates a remarkable reduction of CO2 emissions by 52% compared to integrated production and 67% compared to standard production. This analysis provides valuable insights for managers and policymakers in developing strategies for large-scale, sustainable production using innovative techniques. The main contribution of this study lies in comparing the performance of three different Business Models employed in Italian fresh tomato production

Geometric drawings of Kn with few crossings

AbstractWe give a new upper bound for the rectilinear crossing number cr¯(n) of the complete geometric graph Kn. We prove that cr¯(n)⩽0.380559(n4)+Θ(n3) by means of a new construction based on an iterative duplication strategy starting with a set having a certain structure of halving lines

K1,3K_{1,3}-covering red and blue points in the plane

We say that a finite set of red and blue points in the plane in general position can be $K_{1,3}$-covered if the set can be partitioned into subsets of size $4$, with $3$ points of one color and $1$ point of the other color, in such a way that, if at each subset the fourth point is connected by straight-line segments to the same-colored points, then the resulting set of all segments has no crossings. We consider the following problem: Given a set $R$ of $r$ red points and a set $B$ of $b$ blue points in the plane in general position, how many points of $R\cup B$ can be $K_{1,3}$-covered? and we prove the following results: (1) If $r=3g+h$ and $b=3h+g$, for some non-negative integers $g$ and $h$, then there are point sets $R\cup B$, like $\{1,3\}$-equitable sets (i.e., $r=3b$ or $b=3r$) and linearly separable sets, that can be $K_{1,3}$-covered. (2) If $r=3g+h$, $b=3h+g$ and the points in $R\cup B$ are in convex position, then at least $r+b-4$ points can be $K_{1,3}$-covered, and this bound is tight. (3) There are arbitrarily large point sets $R\cup B$ in general position, with $r=b+1$, such that at most $r+b-5$ points can be $K_{1,3}$-covered. (4) If $b\le r\le 3b$, then at least $\frac{8}{9}(r+b-8)$ points of $R\cup B$ can be $K_{1,3}$-covered. For $r>3b$, there are too many red points and at least $r-3b$ of them will remain uncovered in any $K_{1,3}$-covering. Furthermore, in all the cases we provide efficient algorithms to compute the corresponding coverings.Comment: 29 pages, 10 figures, 1 tabl