| 1. |
- Alakukku, Laura, et al.
(author)
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Maatalouden ympäristötuen vaikuttavuuden seurantatutkimus (MYTVAS 3) : loppuraportti
- 2014
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Since 1995, agri-environmental support partly funded by the EU has formed the core of Finland’s agri-environmental policy. This system has had a variety of impacts on the relationship between agriculture and the environment. Today’s agri-environmental support is one of the packages included in the Rural Development Programme for Mainland Finland (2007–2013/2014), which both in itself and through the underlying EU legislation requires monitoring of the impacts of the measures implemented. The study monitoring the impact of the 2nd Finnish agri-environmental scheme (MYTVAS 3), which ran from 2008 to 2013, forms part of this monitoring. The MYTVAS 3 monitoring study was also financed by the Ministry of the Environment. The monitoring study was carried out by a consortium coordinated by MTT Agrifood Research Finland and including the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), the University of Helsinki, the Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute and the University of Turku.The purpose of the MYTVAS 3 monitoring study was to find out how agri-environmental support and its various measures have affected the state of the environment in agricultural areas, how agri-environmental support has affected the potential for farming and how agri-environmental support should be developed to increase its impact. The monitoring focused on the impacts of agri-environmental support on the nutrient load from agriculture on the waterways and on biodiversity. When evaluating the findings presented, we should remember that while monitoring data shows that something happened, it does not necessarily explain what caused it. It is not always possible to show that particular developments were a specific outcome of the current agri-environmental support system and the implementation of its measures. The delay between a measure and its observed impact is often long, and the cause-and-effect relationships are complicated and partly unknown. Also, other agricultural policy and fluctuations on the market may affect the state of the agricultural environment directly or indirectly.The monitoring data show that agri-environmental support has not had a detrimental impact on the potential for farming. Despite a slight increase in the incidence of weeds, they do not cause problems of the kind that would require amendments to the content of agri-environmental measures. Carbon levels in the surface stratum of arable land seems to be continuing their slow decline, and there is still need for measures to preserve organic material in the soil.Compliance with the fertilisation limits in the agri-environmental support system would seem to have had very little impact on crop quality. Variations in the weight and protein content per hectolitre and per 1,000 seeds were of the same order between 2006 and 2012 as they were between 1995 and 2005. Crop quantities have also not been noticeably affected by compliance with the fertilisation limits. Average crop yields remained stable between 1986 and 2013, and no clearly different crop years were observed in the 2000s. It is possible, however, that the lower fertilisation levels could have lowered crop potential in the years with advantageous weather conditions in the 2000s and that protein contents have been lower in advantageous years.The monitoring data also show that the nutrient load potential of agriculture, measured by nutrient balances, has decreased continuously for nitrogen and particularly for phosphorus. The decrease in the nutrient load potential is due above all to a decrease in the use of synthetic fertilisers. The decline in nitrogen fertilisation has bottomed out in recent years, and low protein levels measured in high crop yield years show that there is no point in further reducing nitrogen fertilisation. Optimising nitrogen fertilisation according to how advantageous the growing season is and effectively using the soluble nitrogen in cattle manure are key measures in achieving reasonable nitrogen balances and good crop quality despite fluctuations in growing season conditions. New crop variants have been found to make more efficient use of nitrogen than old ones, and thus the introduction of new variants should be promoted. Despite the decrease in the nutrient balances, there are indications that nutrient loads in runoff water from domestic animal production sites are becoming an increasing problem. Indeed, the fundamental problem with the nutrient load from agriculture is the diversification of livestock farming and crop farming, which has made it more difficult to use nutrients appropriately. Therefore attention must be paid to measures that both boost the use of nutrients in manure and reduce the levels of nutrients that end up in manure. Based on nutrient load monitoring in the catchment areas of rivers, the phosphorus load per hectare of cropland has decreased in each programme period, being about 80% of the level of the first period (1995–1999) in the third period (2007–2013). Because of the increase in the area of cropland, the nitrogen load on waterways from agriculture continued to grow during the second programme period (2000–2006) but peaked in the third (2007–2013). A similar trend was found in the nitrogen load per hectare of cropland.The most important threat to biodiversity is caused by the development of landscape structure, typically involving a decrease in the number of open or half-open areas excluded from actual cultivation. The consequence of the clearing of margins and ecological islands located in crop fields, drainage measures aimed at increasing arable land and all rationalisation of cultivated areas is the diminishing of exactly those areas that are the most important from the perspective of the biodiversity of the agricultural environment. However, the measure-specific findings in the monitoring study show that biodiversity benefits have been locally achieved where measures have been implemented on a broad enough scale (biodynamic farming, traditional biotopes, wetlands, buffer zones, green fallow / nature management areas). Particular care should therefore be taken that all cultivated land continues to have a sufficient percentage of non-cultivated areas, whether they be natural meadows, nature management areas, biodiversity strips, buffer zones, filter strips, headlands, ecological islands, etc. Including the rather popular nature management areas as a new voluntary measure under basic measures was a significant contribution to biodiversity.Regarding the rural landscape, it may be noted that by visual inspection the area of cropland has remained largely unchanged, at the level of the landscape as a whole it is far more common for the landscape to become more closed than to become more open. This trend was also observed in the visual inspection of traditional biotopes, even if the openness of the meadows monitored largely remained unchanged.The only measures that directly address the reduction of gaseous emissions in the agri-environmental support system are the longterm grass cultivation on peat fields and special aid agreements for slurry injection in cropland. While other measures have indirectly affected gaseous emissions, the impact of agri-environmental support as a whole on reducing gaseous emissions from agriculture has been negligible. In general, we may conclude that the goals, content and support levels of agri-environmental support measures must be increasingly adapted and customised by region, by type of farming and by farm, because both the state of the agricultural environment and the needs of society differ greatly between different types of rural area.
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| 2. |
- Luostarinen, Sari, et al.
(author)
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Manure processing as a pathway to enhance nutrient recycling
- 2020
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Circular economy is increasingly demanded across the world to minimize the need for non-renewable sources of materials and energy. The need to introduce new nutrients into the current demand from mineral resources could be reduced significantly via nutrient recycling. This means recovery of nutrients from different nutrient-rich side-streams and their reuse in different measures, the most significant being food production. Nutrients, especially phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N), are vital for crops to grow. The amounts required as fertilizer products are large. Still, at the time of writing nutrients are not effectively recycled, but a significant share is lost as final disposal and emissions. Recyclable nutrients are available in different side-streams from agriculture, municipalities and industry. The most significant recyclable material is animal manure which is traditionally used as a fertilizer. However, due to segregation of crop and animal production, manure is often regionally concentrated so that its nutrients may be available in excess to the region’s need. This may result in excessive use of manure in the regions of concentrated animal production, while the crop producing regions need to rely on mineral fertilizers. Both have negative environmental consequences. Thus, solutions for regional manure reallocation via improving the transportability of manure are needed to reallocate the nutrients to areas in nutrient deficit. To enable such transportation over long distances and to separate P and N from each other and thus enhance their reuse, manure processing could be used. Manure can be processed with different technologies providing various end-products. The aim of processing is usually to reduce the mass of manure and to concentrate nutrients to improve their transportability. An important aim is also to produce such fertilizer products that replace mineral fertilizers and provide reduced emissions into the environment. Several processing technologies are available and more are being developed. At the time of writing, manure processing is still limited mainly due to challenges with profitability. The investment into large-scale manure processing as required by regional nutrient reallocation is significant and the market for the novel manure-based fertilizer products is only starting to develop. Development of practices for the storage and spreading of the products is also still required. In this report, examples of regions in need of nutrient reallocation via manure processing are described for the Baltic Sea Region and the potential and challenges of manure processing as one solution to reduced nutrient emissions discussed. Summaries of available processing technologies and their end-products as fertilizer products are also presented.
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| 3. |
- Sindhöj, Erik, et al.
(author)
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Technologies and management practices for sustainable manure use in the Baltic Sea Region
- 2020
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Livestock production in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) is often geographically concentrated in certain areas, which creates greater livestock density in those areas. The intensification of livestock production seen in recent decades has compounded this problem by generating large amounts of manure to use in a local area. Poor manure management results in loss of nutrients to the air through gaseous emissions and to water though leaching and runoff. These nutrient losses are responsible for considerable negative impacts to the environment, climate and society. During the past decade, there have been multiple BSR projects addressing sustainable manure use. Most projects have focused on one or a few aspects of sustainable manure use, such as reducing ammonia emissions, or reducing leaching and runoff problems, or increasing nutrient use efficiency from manure. Some projects have focused on specific technologies while others focused more on management practices that can improve sustainability.The objective of this report was to synthesize relevant results and recommendations from the previous BSR projects to create a comprehensive list of their recommendations for improving the sustainability of manure use in the BSR. This was done within the context of various aspects of sustainability that have been dealt with in previous projects, and in terms of where along the manure handling chain the measures are to be applied.Aspects of sustainability that were addressed here are decreasing ammonia emissions, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing runoff and leaching, increasing on farm nutrient use, increasing regional nutrient recycling and addressing odors, pathogens, heavy metals and other risks. Possible measures for improving these aspects of sustainable manure nutrient use recommended in the previous projects were summarized and synthesized in relation to where along the manure handling chain the measures should be implemented. These were presented in a matrix of best practices and techniques for sustainable manure nutrient use in the BSR. Aspects of economic sustainability of manure handling and use were discussed as well as how various governance actions can be used in order to help promote the implementation of these best practices.
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