AgroNum - "leakage" ?
LEAKAGE. Sustainable agriculture through carbon-farming & sequestration often advocates grain yield reductions to lower N-fertilization rates supposedly responsible for GHG emissions. This extensification can lead to “leakage” in that these missing yields will have to be produced elsewhere, often on more marginal land susceptible to soil degradation. This is especially disheartening given that yield gaps across Europe indicate that overall yields should increase, not decrease, in response to European & worldwide food security imperatives.
For instance, Schils et al. 2018 (https://lnkd.in/eX5Kw-db) state that [in Europe /…/ the combined mean annual [grain] yield gap of wheat, barley, maize was 239 Mt, or 42% of the yield potential”. More so, “[This] requires a substantial increase of the crop N-uptake of 4.8 Mt. Across Europe, the average N-uptake gaps, to achieve 80% of the yield potential, were 87, 77 and 43 kg N ha−1 for wheat, barley and maize, respectively.” And in closing, “Emphasis on increasing the N use efficiency is necessary to minimize the need for additional N inputs.”
In that respect, AgroNum™ (https://lnkd.in/exiTpR5a) is three-for-three. Overall, AgroNum target grain yields [RDT] for 11 non-Fabaceae grain bearing field crops (mostly cereals, but also rapeseed, sunflower & maize) are substantially higher than conventional environmental means. Even more so in terms of grain-nitrogen yield [RDN, alias N-uptake]. This, at essentially the same overall N-fertilizer application rates [TUN], increases N-fertilizer use efficiency [NfUE]. Single handedly, AgroNum™ target yields close most the cereal yield gaps across Europe.
#sustainableagriculture #carbonfarming
