Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits

Springmann, Marco; Clark, Michael; Mason-D’Croz, Daniel; Wiebe, Keith; Bodirsky, Benjamin Leon; Lassaletta, Luis; Vries, Wim de; Vermeulen, Sonja J.; Herrero, Mario; Carlson, Kimberly M.; Jonell, Malin; Troell, Max; DeClerck, Fabrice; Gordon, Line; Zurayk, Rami; Scarborough, Peter; Rayner, Mike; Loken, Brent; Fanzo, Jessica; Godfray, H. Charles J.; Tilman, David; Rockström, Johan; Willett, Walter C.

doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0594-0

Cited by 2,259 publications

(1,642 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…The data for N and P inputs are from Holland, Lee‐Taylor, et al () and Cordell et al (), respectively. The anthropogenic planetary boundaries of N and P fertilizer input are from Steffen et al () and Springmann et al (). BNF: Biological Nitrogen Fixation.…”

Section: Managing Nutrients In the Anthropocenementioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Nutrient Budgets for Sustainable Nutrient Management

Zhang

Davidson

Zou

et al. 2020

Global Biogeochemical Cycles

131

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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.

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Section: Managing Nutrients In the Anthropocenementioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying Nutrient Budgets for Sustainable Nutrient Management

Zhang

Davidson

Zou

et al. 2020

Global Biogeochemical Cycles

131

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Removing nitrogen pollution from the environment. Comprehensive analysis suggests that approximately one fourth of all global food produced is wasted along the supply chain (Kummu et al, 2012;Springmann et al, 2018). The catalytic converter is a clear success story, reducing nitrogen emissions from automobiles and improving air quality nationwide (Houlton et al, 2013).…”

Section: /2019ef001222mentioning

confidence: 99%

A World of Cobenefits: Solving the Global Nitrogen Challenge

et al. 2019

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Nitrogen is a critical component of the economy, food security, and planetary health. Many of the world's sustainability targets hinge on global nitrogen solutions, which, in turn, contribute lasting benefits for (i) world hunger; (ii) soil, air, and water quality; (iii) climate change mitigation; and (iv) biodiversity conservation. Balancing the projected rise in agricultural nitrogen demands while achieving these 21st century ideals will require policies to coordinate solutions among technologies, consumer choice, and socioeconomic transformation.

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“…This crop recovery of added P fertilizer (41%) leaves large residues in the soil to build up background P fertility. However, if allowed to continue beyond levels which are considered agronomically useful, this soil P accumulation is not only an unnecessary waste of a critical resource but will eventually pose a long‐term risk to water quality (Carpenter & Bennett, ; Springmann et al, ; Withers et al, ). We estimated that the legacy of residual P that has accumulated in the soil since the crop was first cultivated is approximately 4 Tg (Figure ), and this legacy P could be better utilized to improve the resilience of the sugarcane crop to future P shocks (Rodrigues, Pavinato, Withers, Teles, & Herrera, ; Rowe et al, ).…”

Section: Phosphorus Demand and Efficiency Of Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Improving phosphorus sustainability of sugarcane production in Brazil

et al. 2019

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Phosphorus (P) use in global food and bioenergy production needs to become more efficient and sustainable to reduce environmental impacts and conserve a finite and critical resource (Carpenter & Bennett, Environmental Research Letters, 2011, 6, 014009; Springmann et al., Nature, 2018, 562, 519). Sugarcane is one crop with a large P footprint because production is centered on P‐fixing soils with low P availability (Roy et al., Nature Plants, 2016, 2, 16043; Withers et al., Scientific Reports, 2018, 8, 2537). As global demand for processed sugar and bioethanol continues to increase, we advocate that improving P efficiency could become a key sustainability goal for the sugarcane industry. Here, we applied the 5R global P stewardship framework (Withers et al., Ambio, 2015, 44, 193) to identify more sustainable options to manage P in Brazilian sugarcane production. We show that current inputs of P fertilizer to the current crop area could be reduced by over 305 Gg, or 63%, over the next three decades by reducing unnecessary P fertilizer use, better utilization of recyclable bioresources and redesigning recommendation systems. Adoption of these 5R options would save the sugarcane industry in Brazil 528 US$ million and help safeguard global food and energy security.

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Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits

Cited by 2,259 publications

References 61 publications

Quantifying Nutrient Budgets for Sustainable Nutrient Management

Quantifying Nutrient Budgets for Sustainable Nutrient Management

A World of Cobenefits: Solving the Global Nitrogen Challenge

Improving phosphorus sustainability of sugarcane production in Brazil

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