Halving nitrogen waste in the European Union food systems requires both dietary shifts and farm level actions

Why is nutrient cycling in food systems so limited? A case study from the North-Netherlands region

“…The very limited recovery from consumer waste had an insignificant impact on the NN region as these flows were relatively small (Geertjes et al 2016;Soethoudt and Timmermans 2013). The NUE of the current food system in the NN region was 0.25, which equals the NUE for the Netherlands (Erisman et al 2018) and is higher than the reported NUE value (0.18) for Europe (Leip et al 2022). The relatively high PUE of 0.59 was mostly due to small P surpluses in agriculture when compared to other regions (Einarsson et al 2020) and partly due to the legacy of historically applied P (Sattari et al 2012).…”

“…However, it can also be argued that maintaining the current system compromises global food security due to the strong food-feed competition of current intensive animal production systems (Mottet et al 2017;Muscat et al 2021). Increasing food security with limited environmental impact and reduced land requirements per person requires a shift towards more plant-based diets (Leip et al 2022). Regardless of dietary composition, some regions may not have the capacity to produce enough food to fulfil local demand in a sustainable way (Schulte-Uebbing and De Vries 2021).…”

Detailed nitrogen and phosphorus flow analysis, nutrient use efficiency and circularity in the agri-food system of a livestock-intensive region

“…At lower levels of detail, technology-specific insights are not possible but remain at the level of generic policy advice that can identify key leveraging points within systems. In the excellent work of Leip et al (2022), the authors study scenarios for realizing the EU's Farm to Fork strategy ambition to reduce N emissions by 50% through modelling changes in NUEs in three nodes (farming, reduction of food waste and waste treatment, dietary changes). They conclude that in order to realize the EUs ambitions, technical measures and management improvements will be crucial to increase the NUE in crop and animal production.…”

Holistic nutritional management as a tool to mitigate nitrogen pollution from dairy cattle farming

“…Thus, assuming a 305 day/year lactating period it may be calculated that the EU-27 dairy sector, without considering replacement heifers and the dry period of the dairy cows, consumes 3.00 and excretes 2.17 Tg of N per year. Leip et al (2022) estimated a total of 20 Tg of virgin Nr entering the EU ecosystem every year, and 9.1 Tg of that plus 2.3 Tg of imported feed are being transferred into the livestock sector. Thus, it might be calculated that: (1) the overall involvement of lactating dairy cattle in Nr consumption is 26.3% of total Nr directed to animal feed, and (2) approximately 10% of the virgin Nr entering into the EU ecosystem is deposited as cattle manure.…”