Intensifying rice production to reduce imports and land conversion in Africa

Africa produces around 60% of the rice the continent consumes, relying heavily on rice imports to fulfill the rest of the domestic demand. Over the past 10 years, the rice-agricultural area increased nearly 40%, while average yield remained stagnant. Here we used a process-based crop simulation modelling approach combined with local weather, soil, and management datasets to evaluate the potential to increase rice production on existing cropland area in Africa and assess cropland expansion and rice imports by year 2050 for different scenarios of yield intensification. We find that Africa can avoid further increases in rice imports, and even reduce them, through a combination of cropland expansion following the historical trend together with closure of the current exploitable yield gap by half or more. Without substantial increase in rice yields, meeting future rice demand will require larger rice imports and/or land conversion than now.Here the authors demonstrate that cropland expansion following the historical trend together with closing the current exploitable yield gap by half or more across Africa reduces the continent's reliance on land conversions and imports by 2050

Assessing farmer behaviour as affected by policy and technological innovations: bio-economic farm models

Farm Management,

Methodological and empirical progress and challenges in integrated assessment of agricultural systems and policies

In this contribution we first present a methodology for integrated assessment of agricultural systems (SEAMLESS Integrated Framework), illustrate its application in an integrated assessment of high commodity prices and then discuss its flexibility and limitations. From there we take a broader view and reflect on key scientific and empirical questions with respect to the development of research tools for the integrated assessment of agricultural systems.agricultural systems, integrated assessment, modelling, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management,

Training materials for different categories of users

Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use, Production Economics, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Results from the Fertilizer demonstration experiment with maize at IOP Farm in Iringa, Tanzania in 2019

In 2019, an experiment was run at the IOP farm in Tanzania. Five nutrient management treatments were combined in a full factorial setup with two tillage options. The lowest maize yield was obtained under conventional tillage without fertilizer application, and the highest maize yield with reduced tillage and the highest NPK fertilizer level combined with micronutrients. This highest NKP fertilizer level targeted 70% of water-limited yield. Furthermore, it was shown that P and K were used more efficient under reduced tillage compared to conventional tillage, while there was no difference in N use efficiency between the two tillage options. In addition, a number of field visits was organized. From the six villages surrounding the farm a total of 120 farmers made at least 4 visits to the experiment once in every month between February and June. That brings the number of farmers that learned from the 2018 trial to 480+

Integrated assessment of the EU’s greening reform and feed self-sufficiency scenarios on dairy farms in Piemonte, Italy

Specialised dairy farms are challenged to be competitive and yet respect environmental constrains. A tighter integration of cropping and livestock systems, both in terms of feed and manure flows, can be beneficial for the farm economy and the environment. The greening of the direct payments, which was introduced in the European Union’s greening reform in 2013, is assumed tostimulate the transition towards more sustainable systems. The aim of this study was to quantitatively assess the impacts of greening policies on important economic and environmental indicators of sustainability, and explore potential further improvements in policies. The Farm System SIMulator (FSSIM) bioeconomic farm model was used to simulate the consequences of scenarios of policy change on three representative dairy farms in Piedmont, Italy, i.e., an ‘intensive’, an ‘extensive’, and an ‘organic’ dairy farm. Results showed that in general, there is a large potential to increase the current economic performance of all of the farms. The most profitable activity is milk production, resulting in the allocation of all of the available farm land to feed production. Imposing feed self-sufficiency targets results in a larger adaptation of current managerial practice than the adaptations that are required due to the greening policy scenario. It was shown that the cropping system is not always able to sustain theactual herd composition when 90% feed self-sufficiency is imposed. Regarding the greening policies, it is shown that extensive and organic farms already largely comply with the greening constrains, and the extra subsidy is therefore a bonus, while the intensive farm is likely to sacrifice the subsidy, as adapting the farm plan will substantially reduce profit. The introduction of nitrogen (N)-fixingcrops in ecological focus areas was the easiest greening strategy to adopt, and led to an increase in the protein feed self-sufficiency. In conclusion, it is important to note that the greening policy in its current form does not lead to reduced environmental impacts. This implies that in order to improveenvironmental performance, regulations are needed rather than voluntary economic incentives

Fertiliser use and soil carbon sequestration: Key messages for climate change mitigation strategies

Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increasing soil or biomass carbon stocks are the main agricultural pathways to mitigate climate change. Scientific and policy attention has recently turned to evaluating the potential of practices that can increase soil carbon sequestration. Forty percent of the world’s soils are used as cropland and grassland, therefore agricultural policies and practices are critical to maintaining or increasing the global soil carbon pool. This info note explains the current understanding of the impact of mineral fertiliser use on soil carbon sequestration as a mitigation strategy in agriculture. The science and understanding on soil carbon sequestration and mitigation is still emerging, especially in tropical regions. Taking this into consideration, this info note discusses related effects of fertiliser use on climate change mitigation, such as nitrous oxide (N2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from nitrogen fertiliser use and production, and the potential effects of mineral fertiliser use on land use change

Uncertainty analysis in integrated assessment: the users’ perspective

Integrated Assessment (IA) models aim at providing information- and decision-support to complex problems. This paper argues that uncertainty analysis in IA models should be user-driven in order to strengthen science–policy interaction. We suggest an approach to uncertainty analysis that starts with investigating model users’ demands for uncertainty information. These demands are called “uncertainty information needs”. Identifying model users’ uncertainty information needs allows focusing the analysis on those uncertainties which users consider relevant and meaningful. As an illustrative example, we discuss the case of examining users’ uncertainty information needs in the SEAMLESS Integrated Framework (SEAMLESS-IF), an IA model chain for assessing and comparing alternative agricultural and environmental policy options. The most important user group of SEAMLESS-IF are policy experts at the European and national level. Uncertainty information needs of this user group were examined in an interactive process during the development of SEAMLESS-IF and by using a questionnaire. Results indicate that users’ information requirements differed from the uncertainty categories considered most relevant by model developers. In particular, policy experts called for addressing a broader set of uncertainty sources (e.g. model structure and technical model setup). The findings highlight that investigating users’ uncertainty information needs is an essential step towards creating confidence in an IA model and its outcomes. This alone, however, may not be sufficient for effectively implementing a user-oriented uncertainty analysis in such models. As the case study illustrates, it requires to include uncertainty analysis into user participation from the outset of the IA modelling process

Fertiliser use and soil carbon sequestration: trade-offs and opportunities

Current initiatives to store carbon in soils as a measure to mitigate climate change are gaining momentum. Agriculture plays an important role in soil carbon initiatives, as almost 40% of the world’s soils are currently used as cropland and grassland. Thus, a major research and policy question is how different agricultural management practices affect soil carbon sequestration. This working paper focuses on the impact of mineral fertiliser use on soil carbon sequestration, including synergies with the use of organic inputs (for example crop residues, animal manure) and trade-offs with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Findings from scientific literature show that fertiliser use contributes to soil carbon sequestration in agriculture by increasing biomass production and by improving carbon:nitrogen (C:N) ratios of residues returned to the field. The use of mineral fertiliser can also support the maintenance of carbon stocks in non-agricultural land if improved fertility on agricultural land reduces demand for land conversion. Combining organic inputs with mineral fertiliser seems most promising to sequester carbon in agricultural soils. Increasing nutrient inputs (either organic or mineral fertilisers) may however lead to trade-offs with GHG emissions such as N2O. Improving the agronomic nitrogen use efficiency of nutrient inputs (i.e., additional grain yield per kg N applied) can alleviate this trade-off. While soil carbon sequestration can benefit soil fertility under some conditions and compensate for some GHG emissions related to agriculture (first assessments indicate up to 25% of the emissions related to crop production, depending on region and cropping system), it seems unlikely it can compensate for GHG emissions from other economic sectors. If soil carbon sequestration is a policy objective, priorities should be areas with higher storage potential (wetter and colder climates) and/or regions where synergies with soil fertility and food security are likely to occur (for example farming systems in tropical regions, on sandy soils and/or when cultivating more specialized crops). However, regions with the highest storage potential most likely do not overlap with regions where the largest benefits for soil fertility and food security occur

Benchmarking crop nitrogen requirements, nitrogen-use efficiencies and associated greenhouse gas mitigation potential: Methodology exploration for cereal production in sub-Saharan Africa

This working paper explores a generic method that can be used to benchmark nitrogen (N) input requirements for crop production and the efficiency by which inputs are used. Two types of N benchmarks are introduced: one for short-term and another for long-term assessments. We explain the underlying assumptions, data requirements and types of applications. Both benchmarking methods are especially suitable for regional, national or global analyses. The proposed methodology is illustrated for cereal production (maize, wheat, rice, millet and sorghum) in ten countries in sub-Saharan Africa, under current and optimal nutrient management, for today and towards 2050. We show that agronomic nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE) can be two to four times larger than currently observed in on-farm trials for the long- term benchmark. Potential improvements in N input requirements are related to greenhouse gas (GHG) emission mitigation potentials, using scenarios that include population increase and dietary change, potential yield increase and avoided land reclamation. Here, we show that when following the current trajectory of yield trends while maintaining the low current nitrogen-use efficiency, GHG emissions from cereal production will be three times larger than sustainable intensification of cereals in sub-Saharan Africa. The proposed N benchmarking method is most useful for regional or larger scale analyses and less useful for field assessments. Nonetheless, this might fill a gap in higher scale analyses, especially for estimating potential improvements in NUE and reducing GHG emissions. This working paper presents work in progress. In the future, we will test the proposed methodology on different case studies to evaluate its potential and finetune its operation