Halving nitrogen waste in the European Union food systems requires both dietary shifts and farm level actions

The pivotal role of nitrogen to achieve environmental sustainable development goals and transform our food system is recognized in an ambitious nitrogen waste reduction target in the Farm to Fork Strategy of the European Commission. But is this a realistic objective and if so, what are the pathways that lead to success? To answer these questions, we first established, as a baseline, an updated food system nitrogen budget for the EU for the year 2015. We then built a simple model to combine intervention options that (a) increase farm level nitrogen use efficiencies, (b) reducing food waste, recycling of waste and waste treatment, or (c) achieve a dietary shift towards healthier dietary patterns. From 144 possible combinations of intervention options analysed, we found that 12 combinations of interventions would reduce nitrogen losses by about 50%. We further carried out a semi-quantitative assessment of the societal appreciation of combinations of interventions considering private and public costs of the intervention measures, public benefit through effects on health and increased biodiversity of ecosystems, and public costs for overcoming socio-cultural barriers. Results show that intervention options that assume a moderate combination of intervention options achieve halving of N losses at lower societal costs. We conclude that systemic approaches are paramount to achieve deep nitrogen reduction targets and which diet change appears to be an essential condition for success.

LEIP Adrian;  PATINHA CALDEIRA Carla;  CORRADO Sara;  HUTCHINGS Nick;  LESSCHEN Jan Peter;  SCHAAP Martijn;  DE VRIES Wim;  WESTHOEK H. J.;  VAN GRINSVEN Hans; 

2022-09-30

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

JRC129208

2211-9124 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211912422000384,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC129208,   

10.1016/j.gfs.2022.100648 (online),