Ecological Recycling Agriculture to Reduce Nutrient Pollution to the Baltic Sea

Abstract

ABSTRACT HELCOM (Helsinki Commission) has adopted a programme with a vision of a healthy Baltic Sea Environment, with diverse biological components functioning in balance, resulting in good environmental status and supporting a wide range of sustainable human economic activities. HELCOM assessments presented in the Stakeholder Conference plan of 2007 clearly show that problems with eutrophication exist in most of the sub-basins of the Baltic and that good environmental status has not been achieved. Agriculture is responsible for a large share of the leaching of nutrients to watercourses, including groundwater lakes and finally the sea. The analysis of data presented in this paper concludes that specialized agriculture with its separation of crop and animal production results in a high load of nitrogen and phosphorus to the Baltic Sea. This agricultural specialization took place throughout the Scandinavian countries after World War II and has resulted in farms with a high density of animals and great surpluses of plant nutrients concentrated to certain regions. Examples from Sweden are presented in this paper. This trend of increasing products per animal and per hectare on fewer farms and a higher surplus of nutrients on each of them is continuing in Sweden and is likely to spread to new EU member countries within the Baltic Sea drainage area with the probable consequence of increasing nutrient loads. Ecological Recycling Agriculture (ERA) is defined as an agriculture system based on local and renewable resources that integrate animal and crop production on each farm or farms in close proximity. As a result a large part of the nutrient uptake in the fodder is effectively recycled. This in effect means that each farm strives to be self-sufficient in fodder production, which in turn limits animal density and ensures a more even distribution of animals geographically. This study of 12 Swedish farms confirms earlier results that agriculture based on these principles of ecological recycling can lead to a decrease in the potential emission of reactive nitrogen by half as well as a significant reduction in the accumulation and loss of reactive phosphorus. Application of these agricultural principles throughout the Baltic region in all EU countries would result in the halving of reactive nitrogen losses and minimizing losses of reactive phosphorus. In this way the goals, set by the states of the region, could be met and the process leading to the worst-case scenario of greatly increased nutrient loads to the Baltic Sea could be stopped.