Cargando…
Exploring Trade-Offs Between Profit, Yield, and the Environmental Footprint of Potential Nitrogen Fertilizer Regulations in the US Midwest
Multiple strategies are available that could reduce nitrogen (N) fertilizer use in agricultural systems, ranging from voluntary adoption of new N management practices by farmers to government regulations. However, these strategies have different economic and political costs, and their relative effec...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2022
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9051523/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35498674 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.852116 |
_version_ | 1784696577269432320 |
---|---|
author | Mandrini, German Pittelkow, Cameron Mark Archontoulis, Sotirios Kanter, David Martin, Nicolas F. |
author_facet | Mandrini, German Pittelkow, Cameron Mark Archontoulis, Sotirios Kanter, David Martin, Nicolas F. |
author_sort | Mandrini, German |
collection | PubMed |
description | Multiple strategies are available that could reduce nitrogen (N) fertilizer use in agricultural systems, ranging from voluntary adoption of new N management practices by farmers to government regulations. However, these strategies have different economic and political costs, and their relative effectiveness in decreasing N leaching has not been evaluated at scale, particularly concerning potential trade-offs in crop yield and profitability. To inform policy efforts in the US Midwest, we quantified the effects of four policy scenarios designed to reduce fertilizer N inputs without sacrificing maize yields below 95%. A simulated dataset for economically optimum N rates and corresponding leaching losses was developed using a process-based crop model across 4,030 fields over 30 years. Policy scenarios were (1) higher N prices, (2) N leaching fee, (3) N balance fee, and (4) voluntary reduction of N use by farmers, each implemented under a range of sub-levels (low to high severity). Aggregated results show that all policies decreased N rates and N leaching, but this was associated with an exponential increase in economic costs. Achieving an N leaching reduction target of 20% has an estimated pollution control cost of 30–37 US$/ha, representing 147 million US$/year when scaled up to the state level, which is in the range of current government payments for existing conservation programs. Notably, such control of N losses would reduce the environmental impact of agriculture on water quality (externalities) by an estimated 524 million US$/year, representing an increase in society welfare of 377 million US$/year. Among the four policies, directly charging a fee on N leaching helped mitigate economic losses while improving the point source reduction effect (i.e., targeting fields that were leaching hotspots) and better internalization effect (i.e., targeting fields with higher environmental impact costs). This study provides actionable data to inform the development of cost-effective N fertilizer regulations by integrating changes in crop productivity and N losses in economic terms at the field level. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9051523 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-90515232022-04-30 Exploring Trade-Offs Between Profit, Yield, and the Environmental Footprint of Potential Nitrogen Fertilizer Regulations in the US Midwest Mandrini, German Pittelkow, Cameron Mark Archontoulis, Sotirios Kanter, David Martin, Nicolas F. Front Plant Sci Plant Science Multiple strategies are available that could reduce nitrogen (N) fertilizer use in agricultural systems, ranging from voluntary adoption of new N management practices by farmers to government regulations. However, these strategies have different economic and political costs, and their relative effectiveness in decreasing N leaching has not been evaluated at scale, particularly concerning potential trade-offs in crop yield and profitability. To inform policy efforts in the US Midwest, we quantified the effects of four policy scenarios designed to reduce fertilizer N inputs without sacrificing maize yields below 95%. A simulated dataset for economically optimum N rates and corresponding leaching losses was developed using a process-based crop model across 4,030 fields over 30 years. Policy scenarios were (1) higher N prices, (2) N leaching fee, (3) N balance fee, and (4) voluntary reduction of N use by farmers, each implemented under a range of sub-levels (low to high severity). Aggregated results show that all policies decreased N rates and N leaching, but this was associated with an exponential increase in economic costs. Achieving an N leaching reduction target of 20% has an estimated pollution control cost of 30–37 US$/ha, representing 147 million US$/year when scaled up to the state level, which is in the range of current government payments for existing conservation programs. Notably, such control of N losses would reduce the environmental impact of agriculture on water quality (externalities) by an estimated 524 million US$/year, representing an increase in society welfare of 377 million US$/year. Among the four policies, directly charging a fee on N leaching helped mitigate economic losses while improving the point source reduction effect (i.e., targeting fields that were leaching hotspots) and better internalization effect (i.e., targeting fields with higher environmental impact costs). This study provides actionable data to inform the development of cost-effective N fertilizer regulations by integrating changes in crop productivity and N losses in economic terms at the field level. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-04-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9051523/ /pubmed/35498674 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.852116 Text en Copyright © 2022 Mandrini, Pittelkow, Archontoulis, Kanter and Martin. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Plant Science Mandrini, German Pittelkow, Cameron Mark Archontoulis, Sotirios Kanter, David Martin, Nicolas F. Exploring Trade-Offs Between Profit, Yield, and the Environmental Footprint of Potential Nitrogen Fertilizer Regulations in the US Midwest |
title | Exploring Trade-Offs Between Profit, Yield, and the Environmental Footprint of Potential Nitrogen Fertilizer Regulations in the US Midwest |
title_full | Exploring Trade-Offs Between Profit, Yield, and the Environmental Footprint of Potential Nitrogen Fertilizer Regulations in the US Midwest |
title_fullStr | Exploring Trade-Offs Between Profit, Yield, and the Environmental Footprint of Potential Nitrogen Fertilizer Regulations in the US Midwest |
title_full_unstemmed | Exploring Trade-Offs Between Profit, Yield, and the Environmental Footprint of Potential Nitrogen Fertilizer Regulations in the US Midwest |
title_short | Exploring Trade-Offs Between Profit, Yield, and the Environmental Footprint of Potential Nitrogen Fertilizer Regulations in the US Midwest |
title_sort | exploring trade-offs between profit, yield, and the environmental footprint of potential nitrogen fertilizer regulations in the us midwest |
topic | Plant Science |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9051523/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35498674 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.852116 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT mandrinigerman exploringtradeoffsbetweenprofityieldandtheenvironmentalfootprintofpotentialnitrogenfertilizerregulationsintheusmidwest AT pittelkowcameronmark exploringtradeoffsbetweenprofityieldandtheenvironmentalfootprintofpotentialnitrogenfertilizerregulationsintheusmidwest AT archontoulissotirios exploringtradeoffsbetweenprofityieldandtheenvironmentalfootprintofpotentialnitrogenfertilizerregulationsintheusmidwest AT kanterdavid exploringtradeoffsbetweenprofityieldandtheenvironmentalfootprintofpotentialnitrogenfertilizerregulationsintheusmidwest AT martinnicolasf exploringtradeoffsbetweenprofityieldandtheenvironmentalfootprintofpotentialnitrogenfertilizerregulationsintheusmidwest |