PARIS: Better management of nitrogen-rich fertilisers through alternating crops, optimising use and other measures can yield huge environmental and health benefits, but must boost food production at the same time, researchers warned Wednesday.
"Given the multiple health, climate and environmental impacts of reactive nitrogen, it has to be reduced in all the mediums such as air and water," lead author Baojing Gu, a professor at Zhejiang University, told AFP.The world is naturally awash in nitrogen, which is critical for the survival of all life on Earth, especially plants.
But this natural"nitrogen cycle" has been massively imbalanced by the use of some 120 million tonnes of chemical fertiliser each year, according to the study. One such method is crop rotation where a variety of crops are planted on the same plot of land, optimising the flow of nutrients in the soil.The benefits of slashing agricultural nitrogen pollution are some 25 times higher than the implementation costs of about US$34 billion, they found.