A Narrative Review of the Facts and Perspectives on Agricultural Fertilization in Europe, with a Focus on Italy

Abstract

Fertilizers stand at the base of current agricultural practices, providing the nutrient sustainment required for growing plants. Most fertilizers are synthetic chemicals, whose exploitation at very high levels poses a risk to cultivated land and the whole environment. They have several drawbacks including soil degradation, water pollution, and human food safety. Currently, the urgent need to counterbalance these negative environmental impacts has opened the way for the use of natural and renewable products that may help to restore soil structure, microorganism communities, nutrient elements, and, in some cases, to positively enhance carbon soil sequestration. Here, we endeavor to reinforce the vision that effective strategies designed to mitigate negative anthropic and climate change impacts should combine, in appropriate proportions, solutions addressed to a lower and less energy intensive production of chemicals and to a more inclusive exploitation of renewable natural products as biological soil amendments. After drawing an overview of the agricultural energy demand and consumption of fertilizers in Europe in the last few years (with a particular focus on Italy), this narrative review will deal with the current and prospective use of compost, biochar, and neem cake, which are suitable natural products with well-known potential and still-to-be-discovered features, to benefit sustainable agriculture and be adopted as circular economic solutions.

Agriculture Input Policies in India: Retrospect and Prospects

“…Synthetic chemicals have several drawbacks including soil degradation, water pollution, and human safety. Currently, the urgent need to counterbalance negative environmental impact has opened the way for the use of natural and renewable products that may help to restore soil structure [13,14] identified that an imbalanced usage of chemical fertilizer was one of the major reasons for stagnation in agricultural production, loss of soil health and environmental problems. The trends in fertilizer consumption vis-a-vis total foodgrain production in the country are presented in Table 1.…”

Does the timing of short-term biowaste compost application affect crop growth and potential nitrate leaching? The case studies of processing tomato and cauliflower under field conditions

“…Indeed, it is well known that several vegetable crop species have a relatively low nutrient use efficiency compared to arable crops, often related to the short crop cycle, superficial rooting, relatively high N demand, and short rotation (Cameira and Mota, 2017;De Rosa et al, 2017;Tei et al, 2020). On the other hand, excessive use of mineral fertilisers has led to issues like nutrient run-off, N leaching, decreased stable soil organic matter and microbial activity (Hernandez et al, 2014;Latini et al, 2021). In the Mediterranean environment, the losses of organic matter are increased by specific weather conditions (Zaccardelli et al, 2021).…”

Why Do Medium-Sized Technology Farms Adopt Environmental Innovation? The Mediating Role of Pro-Environmental Behaviors

“…Contemporary medium-sized technology farms are having to deal with a wide array of environmental issues that are a significant source of sustainable production [1][2][3], which comes from the pressure of external stakeholders [4][5][6]. Indeed, external pressures from governments, media, and consumers have also encouraged farm enterprises to adopt new methods to achieve sustainable consumption and production strategies for the environment [7][8][9] because agricultural production has caused great pollution [10][11][12][13]. Therefore, exploring the key variables for environmental innovation (EI) in medium-sized technology farms is crucial, because EI can improve their performance and environmental sustainability [14][15][16].…”