Paper short abstract:

High-tech and data-driven solutions are recognized for enhancing economic performance and resilience in controlled environment agriculture (CEA) for fruits and vegetables. Benefits include increased production efficiency through reduced use of fertilizers, and lower labor costs due to automation.

Paper long abstract:

High-tech and data driven solutions are recognized as potential tools to enhance economic performance and resilience of fruits and vegetables production systems in controlled environment agriculture. The benefits, e.g., include improvements in production efficiency due to decreased use of mineral fertilizers and water and lower labor costs due to a higher degree of automation. At the same time, data driven technologies such as robotics, artificial intelligence and remote sensing require substantial amounts of energy. The vast majority of studies, however, analyze single technologies, food system actors (e.g., farmers) and/or single crops so that the ultimate impact of high-tech implementation on economic performance and resilience in fruits and vegetables systems remains unclear. We therefore conduct a systematic literature review assessing the impact of high-tech adoption in fruits and vegetables systems on economic performance and resilience. Our findings inform the policy debate on fostering the use of high-tech in fresh food production systems, firm-level actors who decide on the adoption of high-tech, and future research regarding high-tech food systems.