Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NutriBudget (NUTRIBUDGET - Optimisation of nutrient budget in agriculture.)
Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2024-02-29
Nitrogen and phosphorus play an essential role in agriculture to maintain fertile and healthy soils, and ensure food security. However, overfertilisation has led to negative impacts on human health, biodiversity, water, air, and soil quality. In addition to this, there are indications of a decline in the soil organic carbon content. This is defined as a threat for European soils due to its crucial link with the ecosystem functioning.
The Horizon Europe NutriBudget project aims at developing the prototype of a first-of-its-kind integrated nutrient management platform, called NutriPlatform. The NutriPlatform will operate as a decision-support tool (DST) to determine which agronomic or policy measures to implement. It will also support assessment of their impact for farmers at a farm level and for policy makers at a regional to European level.
NutriBudget devises an interdisciplinary and holistic concept based on five pillars to help Europe to transition from the current to the desired nutrient status, with balanced spatial agronomic and environmental targets:
• NutriDesign: which critical performance indicator framework to measure
• NutriData: which existing mitigation measures data to collect and new data to generate in five pilot regions (four nutrient hotspots in Belgium, Spain, Italy, Finland and one nutrient deficient area in Switzerland) along a climatic gradient across Europe
• NutriModels: how to model the integrated impact across nutrients, farming systems and spatial scales
• NutriPlatform: how to translate this to a DST for farmers and regional authorities
• Nutri-Actor approach: how to co-create this with users and various actors according to a multi-actor approach
NutriBudget, including the NutriModels and NutriPlatform, supports the adoption of strategic and operational management measures that contribute to sustainable farming by enhancing farmer’s capabilities to restore Europe's ecosystems and biodiversity while closing nutrient gaps by optimised sustainable management of natural resources.
The Horizon Europe NutriBudget project aims at developing the prototype of a first-of-its-kind integrated nutrient management platform, called NutriPlatform. The NutriPlatform will operate as a decision-support tool (DST) to determine which agronomic or policy measures to implement. It will also support assessment of their impact for farmers at a farm level and for policy makers at a regional to European level.
NutriBudget devises an interdisciplinary and holistic concept based on five pillars to help Europe to transition from the current to the desired nutrient status, with balanced spatial agronomic and environmental targets:
• NutriDesign: which critical performance indicator framework to measure
• NutriData: which existing mitigation measures data to collect and new data to generate in five pilot regions (four nutrient hotspots in Belgium, Spain, Italy, Finland and one nutrient deficient area in Switzerland) along a climatic gradient across Europe
• NutriModels: how to model the integrated impact across nutrients, farming systems and spatial scales
• NutriPlatform: how to translate this to a DST for farmers and regional authorities
• Nutri-Actor approach: how to co-create this with users and various actors according to a multi-actor approach
NutriBudget, including the NutriModels and NutriPlatform, supports the adoption of strategic and operational management measures that contribute to sustainable farming by enhancing farmer’s capabilities to restore Europe's ecosystems and biodiversity while closing nutrient gaps by optimised sustainable management of natural resources.
The main work carried out during the first 18 months includes data gathering on the current state-of-the-art and setting up the working framework for the development of the NutriPlatform. More specifically, the following was achieved with respect to the five pillars of the project mentioned above:
• NutriDesign: a Mitigation Measures Catalogue was created to list relevant agronomic measures for optimisation of the nutrient budget in the European Union. The Catalogue currently counts 22 measures with their state-of-the art data, and it will be expanded with additional measures in future. Next, methodology was set to perform meta-analyses on the Catalogue data and to extrapolate these by linking them to the critical performance indicator framework (NutriKPIs). The NutriKPIs framework has been set by conducting an inventory and assessment of existing assessment schemes for agricultural sustainability across Europe. More than 32 existing schemes and tools were identified and evaluated, and the common quantification methods as well as the indicators used are now integrated in the NutriKPI framework. This allows us to derive critical threshold values in view of their impact on crop and animal production (and thereby farm economics), water quality, climate change mitigation and biodiversity.
• NutriData: multi-actor approach was used to make a final selection of 19 out of 22 measures present in the Catalogue to be further experimentally studied in the NutriBudget project. A state-of-the-art on these measures was done and the collected data was added to the Catalogue. The Catalogue summarizes state-of-the-art data and experimental data that will be produced within the NutriBudget project, and finally all data will be fed to the NutriModels. The state-of-the art analysis allowed us to identify knowledge gaps for each of the chosen measures to guide the experimental planning of the pilot regions in order to generate new data that is needed for the NutriModels.
• NutriModels: the approach and framework for the design of the NutriModels was laid down and it focuses on top-down approach (regional level) that is meant to be used by policy makers, whereas bottom-up approach (farm model) will be used by farmers. The calculation steps of these two models are now aligned, however, the final fine-tuning is scheduled for upcoming months. The NutriModels are first-of-its-kind as they will not focus only on N and P, but are also going to be operable for other nutrients such as N, P, K, S, Mg, Ca, Zn and C.
• NutriPlatform: the translation of the work done in the NutriDesign, NutriData and NutriModels pillars, into NutriPlatform is scheduled for the next reporting periods.
• Nutri-Actor approach: this approach allows us to involve all relevant actors (farmers, bio-based community, food industry, policy makers, etc.) interested in nutrient management to participate in co-creation of the NutriBudget outputs. Until now in total 133 stakeholders participated across 7 co-creation sessions in order to receive stakeholder input for co-creation of the Catalogue which was the main focus of the co-creation in 1st reporting period.
• NutriDesign: a Mitigation Measures Catalogue was created to list relevant agronomic measures for optimisation of the nutrient budget in the European Union. The Catalogue currently counts 22 measures with their state-of-the art data, and it will be expanded with additional measures in future. Next, methodology was set to perform meta-analyses on the Catalogue data and to extrapolate these by linking them to the critical performance indicator framework (NutriKPIs). The NutriKPIs framework has been set by conducting an inventory and assessment of existing assessment schemes for agricultural sustainability across Europe. More than 32 existing schemes and tools were identified and evaluated, and the common quantification methods as well as the indicators used are now integrated in the NutriKPI framework. This allows us to derive critical threshold values in view of their impact on crop and animal production (and thereby farm economics), water quality, climate change mitigation and biodiversity.
• NutriData: multi-actor approach was used to make a final selection of 19 out of 22 measures present in the Catalogue to be further experimentally studied in the NutriBudget project. A state-of-the-art on these measures was done and the collected data was added to the Catalogue. The Catalogue summarizes state-of-the-art data and experimental data that will be produced within the NutriBudget project, and finally all data will be fed to the NutriModels. The state-of-the art analysis allowed us to identify knowledge gaps for each of the chosen measures to guide the experimental planning of the pilot regions in order to generate new data that is needed for the NutriModels.
• NutriModels: the approach and framework for the design of the NutriModels was laid down and it focuses on top-down approach (regional level) that is meant to be used by policy makers, whereas bottom-up approach (farm model) will be used by farmers. The calculation steps of these two models are now aligned, however, the final fine-tuning is scheduled for upcoming months. The NutriModels are first-of-its-kind as they will not focus only on N and P, but are also going to be operable for other nutrients such as N, P, K, S, Mg, Ca, Zn and C.
• NutriPlatform: the translation of the work done in the NutriDesign, NutriData and NutriModels pillars, into NutriPlatform is scheduled for the next reporting periods.
• Nutri-Actor approach: this approach allows us to involve all relevant actors (farmers, bio-based community, food industry, policy makers, etc.) interested in nutrient management to participate in co-creation of the NutriBudget outputs. Until now in total 133 stakeholders participated across 7 co-creation sessions in order to receive stakeholder input for co-creation of the Catalogue which was the main focus of the co-creation in 1st reporting period.
To date, the necessary methodology for the development of the NutriPlatform has been laid down. The Mitigation Measures Catalogue has been launched and provides, at the moment partial, overview of relevant agronomic mitigation measures contributing to agricultural sustainability and impact-specific information in regard to environmental performance. The methodology to quantify the impact of the measures and to link these impacts to the NutriKPIs is available and can be used by scientific community. Furthermore, the NutriKPI framework has been developed and as such can support the evaluation of farm performance in view of the long-term objective to make agriculture more sustainable. In that respect, it is a powerful tool that can be combined with the mean-based indicators (proxies for the desired environmental conditions and more practical to measure at the farm level like i.e. cultivation of catch crops), the measures selected from the Catalogue and outputs of NutriModels that take into account spatial variations. Finally, the framework of the NutriModels has been designed and first-of-its-kind integrated NutriModels are expected to be published and ready for use in the next reporting period.