Environmental Impact: Opportunities Through Life Cycle Assessment
How and why is (Dutch) greenhouse horticulture using life cycle assessment to calculate environmental impact? How are growers affected and where do opportunities to reduce impact lie?
Speakers
Alexander van Tuyll has been working on greenhouse horticulture at Wageningen University & Research for nearly five years, with a background in biosystems engineering. His research explores circularity. This is also the topic of his ongoing PhD. Fertilisers, CO₂ and renewable growing media are the focus of his current projects.
Ot Messemaker is Head of Business Finance at Skytree, an Amsterdam-based Direct Air Capture (DAC) company developing systems that capture CO₂ from ambient air on-site at greenhouses and integrate seamlessly with local infrastructure. In his role, Ot structures the subsidy programs and financial incentives that make DAC the most economical CO₂ source available on location. He brings over four years of experience at the intersection of DAC and Dutch horticulture, has led subsidy applications totaling more than EUR 100 million for greenhouse projects, and currently works with growers across more than 150 hectares of greenhouse area on DAC deployments.
Henry Gordon-Smith is the Founder and CEO of Agritecture, a global consulting, planning, and software firm specializing in climate-smart agriculture and controlled environment agriculture (CEA). Since founding Agritecture in 2014, Henry has led 350+ projects across six continents, helping developers, entrepreneurs, and governments design resilient, profitable agricultural systems. His expertise spans CEA, regenerative farming, ag-tech integration, and food systems strategy.
Known professionally as "The Agritect," Henry writes The Agritect Chronicles on LinkedIn and produces the annual Global CEA Census, the industry's leading longitudinal study of farm technology and economics. Through Agritecture Designer — his AI-enabled farm planning platform launched in 2020 — he supports 5,000+ practitioners across 75 countries.
A recognized thought leader, Henry frequently speaks at global events, including the UN Food Systems Summit, World Green Economy Summit, and GreenTech Americas. He serves as Adjunct Lecturer at Columbia University's School of Professional Studies, where he teaches Climate-Smart Agriculture, and is co-developing a new graduate elective on AI & Sustainability. His work has been featured in The New York Times, AgFunder, and more.
Henry holds a Master's in Sustainability Management from Columbia University and a BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia. A Czech, British, and Canadian citizen living as a digital nomad, he brings a multicultural, forward-thinking lens to agriculture.
Through Agritecture, Henry is building the world's most accessible and data-driven platform for farm planning, with a mission to make agriculture more resilient, transparent, and equitable through smart design, innovative policy, and responsible technology.