The close relationship between water and energy consumption in the agribusiness sector (Bazilian et al., 2011) has an impact not only on the final product price but also on resource management. Therefore, the reduction of one or both of these, as well as the reduction of or re-utilization of residues, is of positive economic and environmental relevance. The fact that agriculture has a strong correlation with seasonal factors implies that any process evaluation or improvement should include time factors for planning and logistics. In addition, the current use of the virtual water concept (Allan, 1996) and the greenhouse gas (GHG) effect highlight the importance of assessing in a more precise way the resources embedded in traded agricultural goods.
In the case of value chains, the view that it is worth tackling problems such as process integration or energy interaction (Mateos-Espejel et al., 2011) is increasing. Fig. 1 depicts the analyzed tomato drying value chain, which is made up of seven main sub-processes. This work specifically focuses on growing in greenhouses and the drying sub-processes, based on the fact that both display similar characteristics to be improved: i) high thermal energy requirement to fulfill the operation conditions and to obtain best product quality; ii) different seasonal/time trends for energy and water use; and iii) the need to reduce transportation energy.