To facilitate discussion at ACI European Mineral Fertiliser Summit

 

 

 

 

What can we do to increase sustainability of mineral fertilisers?

  • Close the loop - minimise losses on-farm - making most of manures
  • Reduce demands by the crop & end users?
    • circular economy with all stakeholders
    • Plant Genetics
  • Improved efficiency & sustainability of fertiliser products
    • Green ammonia
      • Fertiberia
      • Yara
    • Lower GHG footprint products - carbon footprinting of all fertiliser products
      • ammonium sulphate lower emissions?
      • LithAN 3.4 kg CO2e/kg N
      • PolAN  3.2 kg CO2e/kg N
    • recycled nutrients from waste processes - eg TraceGrow
    • Mineral fertilisers from organic materials
      • Bio-based fertilisers - FertIberia.. B-Ferst
      • Organo-mineral fertilisers
      • eg digestates - Bertels
      • N2 Applied
      • struvite from water treatment
      • organic vs mineral - when does a product produced from an organic feedstock become mineral?
        • less than 1% organic carbon in product?
      • certified 'organic' vs organic in chemical sense
  • Enhanced efficiency products & formulations
    • coatings
    • Nitrification inhibitors
    • biostimulants
    • soil conditioners
  • Fertiliser choice - informing farmers and consumers
  • Better determining how much nutrients to apply, what when & where?
    • Testing soils, plant & grain
    • Sensing and rapid diagnostics?
    • Experimenting on-farm
  • Food system & what the consumer wants
    • Food supply chain driving
    • but consumers more worried about pesticides rather than fertilisers
    • on food labels in future?
  • Policy - Green Deal and Farm to Fork
  • Soil Health
  • Precision farming & variable rate applications (less easy with organic manures)

Related Organisations

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ADAS provides ideas, specialist knowledge and solutions to secure our food and enhance the environment. We understand food production and the challenges and opportunities faced by organisations operating in the natural environment

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Nitrogen is required annually by most crops (except pulses) to achieve yield and quality. Judging how much N to apply is a key part of nutrient management.

NCSPulse PEP
Crop Nutrition

Plants need around 12 essential mineral nutrients to grow: Nitrogen (N), Phosphorous (P), Potassium (K), Magnesium (Mg), Sulphur (S), Calcium (Ca), Iron (Fe), Manganese (Mn), Zinc (Zn), Copper (Cu), Boron (B) and Molybdenum (Mo).

BASF

Enhanced Efficiency Fertilisers

A range of products are commercially available that claim to enable more efficient nutrient uptake, allowing less nutrient to be applied as fertiliser.

Fertiliser

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Green Ammonia

Many projects across the world are looking to radically reduce the GHG costs of producing ammonia by using renewable electricity for hydrolysis, rather than the energy & natural gas intensive Haber-Bosch process.  This could reduce the GHG costs of N fertiliser, but the real drivers come from using ammonia in the energy chain.

Sustainability

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FertIberia

The largest fertiliser producer in the Iberian peninsula. Developing projects in Green Ammonia and bio-based fertilisers. Leading B-Ferst EU project on advanced bio-based fertilisers

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Currently, the farming sector faces a hard challenge: increasing land productivity in a sustainable way. Over the past decades, however, agri-food specialisation has often compromised the presence of soil nutrients. To reverse this trend, the fertiliser industry must supply renewable nutrients: this is possible only by improving the relationships between the farming sector and the bio-based industries.

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Group of companies producing fertiliser efficiency products.

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Mineral fertilisers combined with materials containing organic carbon and nutrients.

Bio-based fertilisers

Projects and companies are looking hard at recovering nutrients from bio-wastes and by-products to produce organo-mineral fertilisers