Pathways to reduce nutrient loading from livestock sector assessed – suggests investments in on-farm technologies
A recent article assesses policy alternatives to reduce nutrient leakage from livestock farming to the Baltic Sea and concludes that more targeted investments to manure management systems and on-farm technologies would bring better results than what the greening measures in the current EU Common Agriculture Policy has delivered.
The authors model nitrogen leaching from agriculture and compare three scenarios: 1) Reference scenario with current greening measures continued until 2030 2) No greening scenario where restrictions and payments from the CAP are removed and 3) Manure investment scenario where greening measures are replaced with investments in manure management systems. These investments would extend manure storage capacity and increase liquid manure systems and advanced spreading technologies. The results suggest that the investment scenario would deliver the best results among the three options, but do not alone bring nitrogen leaching down to the level of the agreed environmental objectives. Further measures to be considered are e.g. lowering fertilization rates below the economic optimum and setting maximum allowable livestock densities.
Read the full article here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-019-01251-5.