Assistant Professor, UMCES Appalachian Laboratory
Manure Happens: The Consequences of Feeding Seven Billion Human Carnivores
Abstract: Humans have profoundly altered the global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles in an effort to feed over 7 billion people. Food and energy production from agriculture, combined with industrial and energy sources, have more than doubled the amount of reactive nitrogen circulating annually on land and have increased phosphorus consumption by more than five-fold since the industrial revolution, leading to widespread effects on ecosystems, biodiversity, human health, and climate. There have been important successes in reducing nitrogen emissions to the atmosphere by industrial and transportation sectors, and this has improved air quality. Effective solutions for reducing nutrient losses from agriculture to groundwater and surface waters have also been identified, but social, political, and economic impediments to their adoption remain. At the same time, demand for food is growing. Therefore, it is essential to integrate socioeconomic and ecological perspectives when evaluating and designing sustainable intensification strategies for agricultural production.
To this end, we are working with an interdisciplinary group of researchers to develop a “Sustainable Agricultural Matrix,” which is a collection of quantifiable indicators from environmental, social, and economic dimensions, selected according to criteria of sustainability, data availability and quality, and the potential to evaluate trade-offs at national scales. For example, intensification of agricultural may spare land from deforestation, but may result in more water consumption, increased nutrient pollution, or a shift from subsistence to cash crops. International trade may enable a more nutrient-efficient global distribution of crop production, but the risks and benefits to food and energy supply and national security introduced by increasingly interconnected global markets, along with climate change, are still poorly understood and quantified. More work is needed to comprehensively assess agricultural sustainability, especially going beyond biophysical indicators, to include social and economic dimensions, such as ecosystem services, social welfare, equity, and systemic risk.
Monday, November 13, 2017 8:30 AM