Afficher la notice abrégée

The surprisingly small but increasing role of international agricultural trade on the European Union’s dependence on mineral phosphorus fertiliser

hal.structure.identifierInteractions Sol Plante Atmosphère [UMR ISPA]
dc.contributor.authorNESME, Thomas
hal.structure.identifierDepartment of Natural Resource Sciences
dc.contributor.authorROQUES, Solène
hal.structure.identifierDepartment of Natural Resource Sciences
dc.contributor.authorMETSON, Geneviève
hal.structure.identifierMcGill University = Université McGill [Montréal, Canada]
dc.contributor.authorBENNETT, Elena M.
dc.date.accessioned2024-04-08T12:02:28Z
dc.date.available2024-04-08T12:02:28Z
dc.date.issued2016
dc.identifier.issn1748-9326
dc.identifier.urihttps://oskar-bordeaux.fr/handle/20.500.12278/196205
dc.description.abstractEnPhosphorus (P) is subject to global management challenges due to its importance to both food security and water quality. The European Union (EU) has promoted policies to limit fertiliser over-application and protect water quality for more than 20 years, helping to reduce European P use. Over this time period, the EU has, however, become more reliant on imported agricultural products. These imported products require fertiliser to be used in distant countries to grow crops that will ultimately feed European people and livestock. As such, these imports represent a displacement of European P demand, possibly allowing Europe to decrease its apparent P footprint by moving P use to locations outside the EU. We investigated the effect of EU imports on the European P fertiliser footprint to better understand whether the EU’s decrease in fertiliser use over time resulted from P demand being ‘outsourced’ to other countries or whether it truly represented a decline in P demand. To do this, we quantified the ‘virtual P flow’ defined as the amount of mineral P fertiliser applied to agricultural soils in non-EU countries to support agricultural product imports to the EU. We found that the EU imported a virtual P flow of 0.55 Tg P/yr in 1995 that, surprisingly, decreased to 0.50 Tg P/yr in 2009. These results were contrary to our hypothesis that trade increases would be used to help the EU reduce its domestic P fertiliser use by outsourcing its P footprint abroad. Still, the contribution of virtual P flows to the total P footprint of the EU has increased by 40% from 1995 to 2009 due to a dramatic decrease in domestic P fertiliser use in Europe: in 1995, virtual P was equivalent to 32% of the P used as fertiliser domestically to support domestic consumption but jumped to 53% in 2009. Soybean and palm tree products from South America and South East Asia contributed most to the virtual P flow. These results demonstrate that, although policies in the EU have successfully decreased the domestic dependence on mineral P fertiliser, in order to continue to limit global potential mineral P supply depletion and consequences of P losses to waterways the EU may have to think about its trading partners.
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherIOP Publishing
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
dc.title.enThe surprisingly small but increasing role of international agricultural trade on the European Union’s dependence on mineral phosphorus fertiliser
dc.typeArticle de revue
dc.identifier.doi10.1088/1748-9326/11/2/025003
dc.subject.halSciences du Vivant [q-bio]/Sciences agricoles
bordeaux.journalEnvironmental Research Letters
bordeaux.page9 p.
bordeaux.volume11
bordeaux.hal.laboratoriesInteractions Soil Plant Atmosphere (ISPA) - UMR 1391*
bordeaux.issue2
bordeaux.institutionBordeaux Sciences Agro
bordeaux.institutionINRAE
bordeaux.peerReviewedoui
hal.identifierhal-02635776
hal.version1
hal.popularnon
hal.audienceInternationale
hal.origin.linkhttps://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr//hal-02635776v1
bordeaux.COinSctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.jtitle=Environmental%20Research%20Letters&rft.date=2016&rft.volume=11&rft.issue=2&rft.spage=9%20p.&rft.epage=9%20p.&rft.eissn=1748-9326&rft.issn=1748-9326&rft.au=NESME,%20Thomas&ROQUES,%20Sol%C3%A8ne&METSON,%20Genevi%C3%A8ve&BENNETT,%20Elena%20M.&rft.genre=article


Fichier(s) constituant ce document

FichiersTailleFormatVue

Il n'y a pas de fichiers associés à ce document.

Ce document figure dans la(les) collection(s) suivante(s)

Afficher la notice abrégée