The phosphorus mass balance: identifying ‘hotspots’ in the food system as a roadmap to phosphorus security

Cordell, Dana; Neset, Tina-Simone; Prior, Timothy J.

doi:10.1016/j.copbio.2012.03.010

Cited by 80 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Concerted and comprehensive actions are therefore urgently needed to protect our water resources for future generations, and these actions must encompass a societal response involving all stakeholders: the general public, the water industries, agricultural communities and rural and urban planners. Since fertilizers are the primary source of reactive N and P stored, circulating and leaking in our environment, there is a clear strategic need to improve the efficiency of fertilizer N and P use, drawdown the legacy nutrient reserves of N and P in soils, sediments and groundwater and more effectively recover nutrients from urban areas where they become concentrated [61,[119][120][121]. These goals are supported by other policy drivers related to mitigation of the effects of N fertilizer manufacture on climate change and the potential future scarcity of rock phosphate [122,123].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agriculture and Eutrophication: Where Do We Go from Here?

et al. 2014

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Abstract:The eutrophication of surface waters has become an endemic global problem. Nutrient loadings from agriculture are a major driver, but it remains very unclear what level of on-farm controls are necessary or can be justified to achieve water quality improvements. In this review article, we use the UK as an example of societies' multiple stressors on water quality to explore the uncertainties and challenges in achieving a sustainable balance between useable water resources, diverse aquatic ecosystems and a viable agriculture. Our analysis shows that nutrient loss from agriculture is a challenging issue if farm productivity and profitability is to be maintained and increased. Legacy stores of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) in catchments may be sufficient to sustain algal blooms and murky waters for decades to come and more innovation is needed to drawdown and recover these nutrients. Agriculture's impact on eutrophication risk may also be overestimated in many catchments, and more accurate accounting of sources, their bioavailabilities and lag times is needed to direct proportioned mitigation efforts more effectively. Best practice farms may still be leaky and incompatible with good water quality in high-risk areas requiring some prioritization of society goals. All sectors of society must clearly use N and P more efficiently to develop long-term sustainable solutions to this complex issue and nutrient reduction strategies should take account of the whole catchment-to-coast continuum. However, the right balance of local interventions OPEN ACCESS Sustainability 2014, 6 5854 (including additional biophysical controls) will need to be highly site specific and better informed by research that unravels the linkages between sustainable farming practices, patterns of nutrient delivery, biological response and recovery trajectories in different types of waterbodies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agriculture and Eutrophication: Where Do We Go from Here?

et al. 2014

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“…More focus and incentive should also be given to nutrient recovery and recycling practices and technologies, which should be encouraged as a partial substitution for the import of nutrients. An integrated system framework will allow us to identify the overall flow of P through the ecological and human systems and help to identify the hotspots, where efficiency and reuse of P can be improved and how this should be reflected in the development of technologies and policies on different scales and in various sectors [33,34].…”

Section: Food Productionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transition towards Circular Economy in the Food System

et al. 2016

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Growing population and increased demand for food, inefficient resource use and food distribution, environmental impacts, and high rates of food wasted at all stages of the food system are all calling for transition towards more sustainable practices. In this article we apply the concept of circular economy to the case of a sustainable food system. Furthermore, we explore the transition towards a circular food system through the lens of socio-technical transition theory towards sustainability. We discuss challenges and potential solutions for the production stage (focusing on nutrient flow), the consumption stage (focusing on meat consumption), and food waste and surplus management and prevention.

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“…Die zukünftige Versorgung mit Phosphor (P), ein nicht substituierbares Element und wesentlicher Faktor der globalen Nahrungsmittelversorgung, ist in den vergangenen Jahren zunehmend in das öffentliche und akademische Bewusstsein gerückt (Gilbert 2009;Cooper et al 2011). Gegenwärtige Publikationen widmen sich vorrangig der Diskussion um "Peak P" (Scholz/Wellmer 2013), P-Stoffstromanalysen (Cordell et al 2012) (Scharpf 1997), der explizit die internen Faktoren menschlichen Handels aufgreift (vgl. Abbildung 1).…”

Section: Modellierung Von Materialflüssenunclassified