Beyond the Farm to Fork Strategy: Methodology for designing a European agro-ecological future.

The publication of the European Commission's Farm to Fork Strategy has sparked a heated debate between those who advocate the intensification of agriculture in the name of food security and those who recommend its de-intensification for environmental reasons. The design of quantified scenarios is a key approach to objectively evaluate the arguments of the two sides. To this end, we used the accounting methodology GRAFS (Generalized Representation of Agri-Food Systems) to describe the agri-food system of Europe divided into 127 geographical units of similar agricultural area, in terms of nitrogen (N) fluxes across cropland, grassland, livestock, and human consumption.

Nesting nitrogen budgets through spatial and system scales in the Spanish agro-food system over 26 years.

Along its route through the agro-food system nitrogen (N) can be wasted, heightening diverse environmental problems. Geopolitical instabilities affect prices of N fertilisers and livestock feed, challenging production systems and increasing their need to reduce N waste. The analysis of N flows is essential to understanding the agroenvironmental performance of agro-food systems to detect leakages and to design strategies for reducing N pollution while producing feed and food.

Nitrogen inputs by irrigation is a missing link in the agricultural nitrogen cycle and related policies in Europe.

Irrigation, one of the 28 agri-environmental indicators defined in the European Common Agricultural Policy, is often neglected in agricultural nitrogen (N) budgets, while it can be a considerable source of N in irrigated agriculture. The annual N input from irrigation water sources (NIrrig) to cropping systems was quantified for Europe for 2000-2010 at a resolution of 10 × 10 km, accounting for crop-specific gross irrigation requirements (GIR) and surface- and groundwater nitrate concentration. GIR were computed for 20 crops, while spatially explicit nitrate concentration in groundwater was derived using a random forest model.

How much can changes in the agro-food system reduce agricultural nitrogen losses to the environment? Example of a temperate-Mediterranean gradient.

Ammonia (NH) volatilization, nitrous oxide (NO) emissions, and nitrate (NO) leaching from agriculture cause severe environmental hazards. Research studies and mitigation strategies have mostly focused on one of these nitrogen (N) losses at a time, often without an integrated view of the agro-food system. Yet, at the regional scale, NO, NH, and NO loss patterns reflect the structure of the whole agro-food system.

Agriculture specialization influence on nutrient use efficiency and fluxes in the St. Lawrence Basin over the 20th century.

Increasing the overall use efficiency of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) resources in food production while minimizing losses to the environment are required to meet the dual challenge of food security and sustainability. Yet studies quantifying the overall performance of different agro-system types and how these have changed over time remain rare, although they are essential to propose solution pathways. Here, we reconstructed fluxes of N and P within 78 watersheds of the St.