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Farm-based tourism has a long tradition in Europe. Using farms to host tourists has become more widely seen as an effective means of supporting local economies and contributing to the preservation of landscapes and cultural heritage in the countryside. Furthermore, farm-based tourism is considered one of the most environmentally sustainable activities among touristic options. Nevertheless, the environmental sustainability of holiday farms still must be assessed. No applications of an environmental assessment method to touristic farms can be found in the literature. The only reference for such application is the PCR (Product Category Rule) basic module on “Accommodation, food and beverage services” developed for the Environmental Product Declaration system ® . This document can be used as a reference for declarations for several hosting structures or catering services, nevertheless the performance of this module on touristic farms has not been validated yet. This study therefore aims to discuss and give practical recommendations when the PCR on accommodations is used for holiday farms thorough an actual case study in Northern Italy. The farm adopted as case study covers 15 ha of orchards managed according to the organic production protocol. In order to precisely evaluate the farm, the performance of three functional units was tested applying a full Life Cycle Assessment, in accordance with the guidelines and requirements of the ISO 14040. Among other impact categories, the global warming potential of the whole farm in 2011 is 112 tCO 2 eq, which corresponds to 232 kg CO 2 eq/(guest ∗ night) and 3.32 kg CO 2 eq/€. Considering the services in the farm, 81% of the global warming potential is related to the breakfast service, 2% to the room services and the remaining 18% to the agricultural parts of the system. The results allow us to highlight general key aspects to be considered for the definition of product category rules for such activity including the importance of the choice of the modelling approach, the system boundaries and the functional unit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many aspects of environmental accounting methodologies in food production have already been investigated, the application of environmental indicators in the fruit sector is still rare and no consensus can be found on the preferred method. On the contrary, widely diverging approaches have been taken to several aspects of the analyses, such as data collection, handling of scaling issues, and goal and scope definition. This paper reviews studies assessing the sustainability or environmental impacts of fruit production under different conditions and identifies aspects of fruit production that are of environmental importance. Four environmental assessment methods which may be applied to assess fruit production systems are evaluated, namely Life Cycle Assessment, Ecological Footprint Analysis, Emergy Analysis and Energy Balance. In the 22 peer-reviewed journal articles and two conference articles applying one of these methods in the fruit sector that were included in this review, a total of 26 applications of environmental impact assessment methods are described. These applications differ concerning e.g. overall objective, set of environmental issues considered, definition of system boundaries and calculation algorithms. Due to the relatively high variability in study cases and approaches, it was not possible to identify any one method as being better than the others. However, remarks on methodologies and suggestions for standardisation are given and the environmental burdens of fruit systems are highlighted. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]