Abstract
Nutrient management is arguably a key factor for achieving several of the UN Sustainability Development Goals. It plays a key role in the production of sufficient amounts of nutritious food, while poor nutrient management leads to nutrient losses (notably of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P)) and contributes to air and water pollution and biodiversity loss. Nutrient management in China is complicated because of the diversity in farming systems and environments, the countless number of farm households and small farms, and the fragmented agricultural supply and advisory system. Current nutrient management in China’s agriculture has become a global concern because of the implications of the large N and P inputs and losses.
In this perspective, we identify and discuss several barriers for implementing environmentally-sound nutrient management, and highlight that farmers currently have limited farm-specific techniques, tools and incentives for precision and environmentally sound nutrient management. Most crop farmers manage primarily by choosing fertilizer bag size and nutrient formulation, while many livestock farmers have a headache of manure management, because of a lack of appropriate manure recycling opportunities. We argue that nutrient management in China is at the crossroads; decisions have to be made about the development and testing of farm-specific techniques and tools to provide farmers a customary dashboard with indicators and a steering wheel for precision and environmentally-sound nutrient management. Likewise, integrated crop-livestock systems and sustainability-driven farm business models have to be developed, within the context of Agriculture Green Development, which aims at greening agriculture and enhancing ecosystem services. There is also a need for in-depth and long-term studies of whole farming systems to better understand the impact of farmers’ decisions on nutrient cycling, use efficiency and losses, to test and improve nutrient management tools, and to explore the effects of policy measures. Such approaches could be applied and tested first in Science and Technology Backyards and then up-scaled to other villages and counties.
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Introduction
Nutrient management in China attracted global attention from the early 2000s when results were made public about the large increases in food production and the large increases in fertilizer use and nutrient losses (e.g., Zhu and Chen 2002; Liu and Diamond 2005; Gao et al. 2006; Ju et al. 2022; Zhu et al. 2022). Following extensive testing and improving of the tools and techniques, other farmers should be supplied with appropriate tools and techniques as well.
A possible linkage of farm-based models with monitoring and accounting tools and incentives via the internet should be discussed further. It would also allow to reward good farm performance with premiums from food processing sectors and retail, or link governmental support to farm performance in a fast and transparent manner. However, there are privacy and confidentiality implications involved here, and the tools and models have to be sufficiently robust to allow credible reporting and accounting.
Importantly, the development of the tools and techniques should be linked to the concepts, ideas, and targets of the Agriculture Green Development program and policy, as this program and associated policy aim at a restructuring and greening of the agricultural and food processing sectors in China within the next decades (Shen et al. 2020). The scope of the Agriculture Green Development program is rather broad; it focuses on increasing productivity and economic profitability, land and water use efficiency, nutrient use efficiency, and soil carbon sequestration, and on minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, nutrient losses, pesticide use and energy use. A key pillar of Agriculture Green Development is enhancing ecosystem services, protecting biodiversity and restoring degraded landscapes (Shen et al. 2020; Zhang et al. in press). These different foci also require appropriate tools and incentives. Preferably, just one modeling/monitoring/accounting tool should be developed per farm type, to prevent overload. These tools have to be simple and accurate; but farmers may need the help of advisors for completing the input files and for interpretation of the results.
Our hypothesis is that farm-specific techniques and tools, and sustainability-driven farm business models are key to environmentally-sound nutrient management. Sustainability-driven farm business models are also a panacea to Agriculture Green Development. The implication of this hypothesis is that the businesses of farmers and other stakeholders should be considered as the starting point for the transition to environmentally-sound nutrient management and agriculture green development. The required farm business models are sustainability-driven, because farmers are rewarded for those functions that society demands, and that have impact on the environment and society. Thus, farmers have to be rewarded not only for the food, feed and fiber they deliver, but also for environmental-sound nutrient management, SOC sequestration, greenhouse gas mitigation, protection and provisioning of functional and intrinsic biodiversity, nutrient cycling, landscape maintenance, and water storage, purification and regulation. This requires a redirection of governmental support, and greater involvement of processing industry, retail and suppliers in the renumeration of farmers.
Setting-up such sustainability-driven farm business models will be a joined effort of farmers, industry, policy makers, scientists and other actors in the food production-consumption chain. Pilots could be established first at regional levels. Let us find out whether sustainability-driven business models are a panacea to environmental-sound nutrient management.
Conclusions
Nutrient management in China is at the crossroads. Decisions have to be made about the development and testing of farm-specific techniques and tools to provide farmers a customary dashboard with indicators and steering wheel for precision and environmentally-sound nutrient management. Decisions have to be made also about the development of sustainability-driven farm business models and integrated crop-livestock farming systems within the context of Agriculture Green Development, which aims at greening agriculture and enhancing ecosystem services, protecting biodiversity and restoring degraded landscapes. These tools, techniques and models have to be developed jointly by scientists, farmers, advisors, policy makers and food processing and retail.
Though fertilizer use has started to decrease from 2016 onwards, following a steep and continuous increase since the 1970s, total inputs of N and P in crop and animal production and the associated N and P losses are still large. Various factors may have contributed to the recent decline in fertilizer use, but there is no guarantee that these factors lead in the end to environmentally-sound nutrient management and sufficient production of nutritious food. As a matter of fact, there are several barriers in practice for environmentally-sound nutrient management. We argue that the most decisive barrier is that farmers currently have no appropriate information, tools, techniques and incentives for conducting precision and environmentally-sound nutrient management. Instead, most crop farmers manage primarily by choosing fertilizer bag size and nutrient formulation, while many livestock farmers have a headache of manure management, because of malfunctioning manure processing techniques and a lack of appropriate manure recycling opportunities.
Evidently, there is a need for increased crop-livestock integration (Hou et al. 2021). Regions with high livestock density will have to decrease livestock density to allow proper utilization of manure nutrients, and to minimize nutrient losses. Incentives for manure processing, transport and utilization have to be redirected to the end-users of manure (Tan et al. 2021). There is also need for simple manure nutrient accounting systems on both livestock and crop farms to be able to monitor progress.
Looking forward, researchers should be encouraged to conduct whole-farm analysis over a long term. They should develop and test new tools, techniques, green farming systems, sustainability-driven farm business models, together with entrepreneurial farmers, advisors from agricultural bureaus, policy makers, and food processing and retail. Instead of conducting another field experiment and/or another snap-shot farm survey, there is need for in-depth and long-term studies of whole farming systems to better understand the impact of farmers’ decisions on nutrient cycling, use efficiency and losses, to test and improve nutrient management tools, and to explore the effects of policy measures.
Such approaches could be applied and tested first in Science and Technology Backyards and then up-scaled to other villages and counties. It may involve also training and coaching of the advisors of the agricultural bureaus and enterprises, as these advisors have a key role in technology transfer and supporting farmers. These suggestions will pave the way towards accelerating the implementation of precision and environmentally-sound nutrient management in farms, and thereby contribute to increasing nutrient use efficiency and to decreasing nutrient losses in an accountable manner.
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Acknowledgements
This perspective was written as a contribution to the special issue ‘Nutrient management and policy in China’. The original idea of the authors of this paper was to organize a workshop and to discuss ‘nutrient management in China’ from different angles with a selected group of scientists. Based on the outcome of workshop, several review and synthesis papers should be written. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic disturbed this idea. We thank the authors of the papers of this special issue for their contributions. We are very grateful to the editors of Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems for their guidance, patience and encouragement. We acknowledge the help of Tao Zhang and Guichao Dai for drafting the figures, and prof. Lin Ma and Weitong Long for their comments on a draft version.
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Hou, Y., Chen, X. & Oenema, O. Nutrient management in China at the crossroads. Nutr Cycl Agroecosyst 127, 1–10 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10705-023-10301-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10705-023-10301-0