An Integrated Approach to a Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) Indicator for the Food Production–Consumption Chain

Erisman, J. W.; Leach, Allison M.; Bleeker, A.; Atwell, Brooke; Cattaneo, Lia; Galloway, James N.

doi:10.3390/su10040925

Cited by 78 publications

(68 citation statements)

References 40 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Consequently, nutrient budgeting approaches have extended their application from focusing on production only to considering the whole food system, including consumption and the supply chain. For example, following principles of Life Cycle Assessment, N (or P) footprint analyses quantify N (or P) pollution or resource depletion associated with consuming different food and energy goods by an individual or by an institution such as a university (Erisman et al, ; Hoekstra & Wiedmann, ; Leach et al, ; Leach et al, ; Leip et al, ; Uwizeye et al, ; Xue & Landis, ). Conceptual models, such as the Generic Representation of Agro‐Food Systems (Billen et al, ), have been developed to track N flows among regions and sectors in the food system.…”

Section: A Brief History Of Nutrient Budgetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Nutrient Budgets for Sustainable Nutrient Management

Zhang

Davidson

Zou

et al. 2020

Global Biogeochemical Cycles

133

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, provide vital support for human life, but overloading nutrients to the Earth system leads to environmental concerns, such as water and air pollution on local scales and climate change on the global scale. With an urgent need to feed the world's growing population and the growing concern over nutrient pollution and climate change, sustainable nutrient management has become a major challenge for this century. To address this challenge, the growing body of research on nutrient budgets, namely the nutrient inputs and outputs of a given system, has provided great opportunities for improving scientific knowledge of the complex nutrient cycles in the coupled human and natural systems. This knowledge can help inform stakeholders, such as farmers, consumers, and policy makers, on their decisions related to nutrient management. This paper systematically reviews major challenges, as well as opportunities, in defining, quantifying, and applying nutrient budgets. Nutrient budgets have been defined for various systems with different research or application purposes, but the lack of consistency in the system definition and its budget terms has hindered intercomparison among studies and experience‐sharing among researchers and regions. Our review synthesizes existing nutrient budgets under a framework with five systems (i.e., Soil‐Plant system, Animal system, Animal‐Plant‐Soil system, Agro‐Food system, and Landscape system) and four spatial scales (i.e., Plot and Farm, Watershed, National, and Global scales). We define these systems and identify issues of nitrogen and phosphorus budgets within each. Few nutrient budgets have been well balanced at any scale, due to the large uncertainties in the quantification of several major budget terms. The type and level of challenges vary across spatial scales and also differ among nutrients. Improvement in nutrient budgets will rely not only on the technological advancement of scientific observations and models but also on better bookkeeping of human activity data. While some nutrient budget terms may need decades, or even centuries, of research to be well quantified within desirable levels of uncertainties, it is imperative to effectively communicate to interested stakeholders our understanding of nutrient budgets so that scientists and a variety of stakeholders can work together to address the sustainable nutrient management challenge of this century.

show abstract

Section: A Brief History Of Nutrient Budgetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Nutrient Budgets for Sustainable Nutrient Management

Zhang

Davidson

Zou

et al. 2020

Global Biogeochemical Cycles

133

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Crop NUE has been used as a performance indicator for agricultural production and a policy tool for regulating N fertilizer use (Erisman et al, 2018;Powell et al, 2010). For example, beginning in the late 1980s and through the early 2000s, increases in NUE in several European Union countries coincided with changes in the European Union Common Agricultural Policy, which reduced crop subsidies, and adoption of the European Union Nitrates Directive, which limited manure application rates on cropland (van Grinsven et al, 2012(van Grinsven et al, , 2015.…”

Section: Comparison Of Nue In Corn and Winter Wheat With Previous Stumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within the United States, increases in NUE since the 1990s were largely caused by increasing crop yields, resulting from improved crop varieties, increased irrigation, and other technological improvements (van Grinsven et al, 2015;Xu et al, 2013), and steady input of N fertilizer, resulting from regulatory programs of nutrient management (Ferguson, 2015). However, limited by the unavailability of a longterm crop-specific database, comparing crop NUE is therefore challenging, and heterogeneity among countries should be interpreted cautiously till the methods and data are proven comparable (Erisman et al, 2018).…”

Section: Comparison Of Nue In Corn and Winter Wheat With Previous Stumentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Improved NUE in the United States has been achieved by increased stress tolerance of modern hybrids, improved management of crop production such as conservation tillage, higher plant densities, and improved N-fertilizer management (Cassman, 2017;Cassman et al, 2002;Duvick & Cassman, 1999;Ferguson, 2015). Likewise in Europe, large variations in NUE of foodproducing systems were recently reported for the period of 1980-2011 (Erisman et al, 2018). Likewise in Europe, large variations in NUE of foodproducing systems were recently reported for the period of 1980-2011 (Erisman et al, 2018).…”

Section: Reasons For the Variations Of Nue In Corn And Winter Wheatmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Are We Getting Better in Using Nitrogen?: Variations in Nitrogen Use Efficiency of Two Cereal Crops Across the United States

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Spatial variation and temporal trajectory of crop nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) have important implications for nitrogen management and environmental conservation. Previous studies have examined cross-nation divergences in crop NUE but often overlooked its spatial heterogeneity and cross-crop differences at subnational scales. We examined the relationship between state-level NUE and nitrogen fertilizer use for two major fertilizer-consuming crops, corn and winter wheat, which account for over half of national N fertilizer use in the United States. Since 1970, as N fertilizer use rates have changed, the responses of crop yield and NUE have exhibited large temporal and spatial variations. It is evident that NUE of corn begins to decline when N fertilizer application rate exceeds~150 kg N ha −1 yr −1 , and that yield response of winter wheat slows down with annual N fertilizer input above~50 kg N ha −1 yr −1 . State-level NUE in both crops has risen in recent decades, which could potentially reduce N loss from agricultural production. Across the United States, some major corn-producing states demonstrate a shift from an increasing trend of NUE during the period 1970 to 1999 to a decreasing trend after 2000, whereas winter wheat-producing states present an opposite pattern. Furthermore, this study indicates that annual dynamics of N surplus in corn is closely tied with grain yields, while that in winter wheat significantly correlates with N fertilizer input. A larger proportion of N loss would be anticipated if no further increase in corn yield was obtained or fertilizer use kept rising in winter wheat.Plain Language Summary There have been growing concerns about a mismatch between agricultural nitrogen supply and crop nitrogen demand. To reduce nitrogen pollution from cultivation, it is essential to know how nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) of crops has changed over space and time, and how far we are from their potentials. Here we examined the NUE patterns in two major fertilizer-consuming crops across the United States since 1970. Despite large spatial variations, we found that NUE in corn and winter wheat has improved in recent decades, potentially reducing nitrogen loss. We also identified a turning point of nitrogen fertilizer use rate for each crop, above which NUE begins to decline or yield response slows down. In addition, our study shows that nitrogen demand and supply play different roles between crops in regulating nitrogen surplus.Key Points:• Responses of yield and N use efficiency to N fertilizer input exhibit different trajectories between corn and winter wheat and vary across the states • State-level NUE of corn and winter wheat has improved in recent decades, but peak NUE occurs at a medium level of N fertilizer input • Interannual variations in N surplus at a national scale are closely tied with grain yields in corn and with N fertilizer use rate in winter wheatSupporting Information:• Supporting Information S1

show abstract

“…In addition, it does not distinguish virgin from recycled nutrients or whether nutrients are captured for the primary product or for primary + secondary products. Erisman et al (2018) also developed a method for NutUE, but it considers only N. It also has a broader system boundary, not specifying different chains. A different concept of the nutrient footprint was presented by Leach et al (2012), who developed an N footprint tool which calculates annual per capita N losses to the environment caused by food consumption.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Applying the nutrient footprint method to the beef production and consumption chain

Joensuu

Pulkkinen

Kurppa

et al. 2018

Int J Life Cycle Assess

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose An indicator of nutrient use efficiency through the entire food chain has been lacking. This article proposes a nutrient footprint method to estimate the efficiency of using both nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in animal production chains following Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Methods Following the nutrient footprint method of Grönman et al. (2016), we applied the nutrient footprint method to the Finnish beef production and consumption chain. We defined N and P flows associated with the beef chain from a product-specific point of view. The nutrient footprint is a resource efficiency indicator which combines the amount of nutrients captured for use in the production and consumption chain and their nutrient use efficiency (NutUE) either in the primary product or in both the primary + secondary products. Results and discussion Each 1000 kg of Finnish beef consumed requires 1700 kg N and 189 kg P during its life cycle. The percentage of virgin nutrient is more than 50% for N, but only 25% for P. NutUE in the primary product and in both primary + secondary products for N is 1% and 47% and for P is 0.2% and 74%, respectively. Conclusions The nutrient footprint offers information about NutUE in a simple and comparable form. In transition towards systems with sustainable nutrient use, it is essential to identify hot spots of nutrient leakage to be able to close them and improve food chains.

show abstract

An Integrated Approach to a Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) Indicator for the Food Production–Consumption Chain

Cited by 78 publications

References 40 publications

Quantifying Nutrient Budgets for Sustainable Nutrient Management

Quantifying Nutrient Budgets for Sustainable Nutrient Management

Are We Getting Better in Using Nitrogen?: Variations in Nitrogen Use Efficiency of Two Cereal Crops Across the United States

Applying the nutrient footprint method to the beef production and consumption chain

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About