Tomatoes are a profitable direct-market crop for diversified Midwestern farmers. Unfortunately, many tomatoes with the flavor and quality characteristics consumers desire (such as heirloom varieties) lack agronomic traits important to organic farmers. Hoop-house production offers potentially higher yields and quality than field-grown tomatoes, and has become a popular option for organic farmers. This study compares 19 varieties of tomatoes in both organic hoop house and field conditions, to identify high-performing varieties for future plant breeding, and to characterize the effect of hoop houses on productivity and quality traits. We found that tomatoes grown in a hoop house had significantly higher yield, lower disease severity and higher °Brix (soluble sugars) than those grown in an adjacent field; and that management (hoop house versus field) had significantly more influence over those traits than other variables (variety, market class or year). This lack of varietal differences between management systems will simplify breeding efforts aimed at introducing varieties for hoop house production.

The following study assesses cold-season hoop house lettuce production in the context of local food systems’ relative environmental effects. For this purpose, we compare the carbon footprints of leaf lettuce production in two climatic zones, one close to the consumer market and one distant, via environmental impact modeling in SimaPro 7.3. A site-specific scenario is first detailed with organic leaf lettuce locally grown in an East Lansing, Michigan hoop house. This is compared to a hypothetical scenario, modeled using average industry data, with leaf lettuce conventionally grown in California then shipped to East Lansing. The system boundaries used in this analysis extend from manufacturing of farm production inputs to a hypothetical retail gate. We assumed that the consumer drove the same distance to the retailer in each case. The functional unit used is 1 kg of leaf lettuce. Results demonstrate that the distant system exhibits 4.3 times the CO2 ‘footprint’ per kg of lettuce. This nonlocal system also resulted in higher resource depletion, health impact and ecological damage potential as demonstrated via the SimaPro simulation. This study concludes that unheated, hoop house lettuce production, given the assumption on within-area travel, has a smaller carbon footprint than outdoor, distant production, and speaks to both the potential value of more localized food systems and the need for a more diverse set of scenario modeling to understand the boundaries of this value.