An Integrated Approach to a Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) Indicator for the Food Production–Consumption Chain

Erisman, Jan Willem; Leach, Allison; Bleeker, Albert; Atwell, Brooke; Cattaneo, Lia; Galloway, James

doi:10.3390/su10040925

Submit to this Journal Review for this Journal Edit a Special Issue

Article Menu

...

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

An Integrated Approach to a Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) Indicator for the Food Production–Consumption Chain

^1,2,*

³,

^4,†

⁵,

⁵ and

⁵

Louis Bolk Institute, Driebergen 3972LA, The Netherlands

Faculty of Science, Earth and Climate, VU University, Amsterdam 1081HV, The Netherlands

Department of Natural & The Environment and The Sustainability Institute, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824, USA

⁴

Energy Research Center of the Netherlands, Petten 1755LE, The Netherlands

⁵

Department of Environmental Science, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904, USA

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

^†

Current address: PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, The Hague 2594AV, The Netherlands.

Sustainability 2018, 10(4), 925; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10040925

Received: 13 December 2017 / Revised: 19 March 2018 / Accepted: 20 March 2018 / Published: 22 March 2018

(This article belongs to the Section Environmental Sustainability and Applications)

View Full-Text Download PDF

Browse Figures

Citation Export

Abstract

Reducing nitrogen pollution across the food chain requires the use of clear and comprehensive indicators to track and manage losses. The challenge is to derive an easy-to-use robust nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) indicator for entire food systems to help support policy development, monitor progress and inform consumers. Based on a comparison of four approaches to NUE (life cycle analysis, nitrogen footprint, nitrogen budget, and environmental impact assessment), we propose an indicator for broader application at the national scale: The whole food chain (NUE_FC), which is defined as the ratio of the protein (expressed as nitrogen) available for human consumption to the (newly fixed and imported) nitrogen input to the food system. The NUE_FC was calculated for a set of European countries between 1980 and 2011. A large variation in NUE_FC was observed within countries in Europe, ranging from 10% in Ireland to 40% in Italy in 2008. The NUE_FC can be used to identify factors that influence it (e.g., the share of biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) in new nitrogen, the imported and exported products and the consumption), which can be used to propose potential improvements on the national scale. View Full-Text

Keywords: nitrogen use efficiency; food chain; Europe; budget

▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Share and Cite

MDPI and ACS Style

Erisman, J.W.; Leach, A.; Bleeker, A.; Atwell, B.; Cattaneo, L.; Galloway, J. An Integrated Approach to a Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) Indicator for the Food Production–Consumption Chain. Sustainability 2018, 10, 925. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10040925

AMA Style

Erisman JW, Leach A, Bleeker A, Atwell B, Cattaneo L, Galloway J. An Integrated Approach to a Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) Indicator for the Food Production–Consumption Chain. Sustainability. 2018; 10(4):925. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10040925

Chicago/Turabian Style

Erisman, Jan W., Allison Leach, Albert Bleeker, Brooke Atwell, Lia Cattaneo, and James Galloway. 2018. "An Integrated Approach to a Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) Indicator for the Food Production–Consumption Chain" Sustainability 10, no. 4: 925. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10040925

Find Other Styles

Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.

Article Metrics

Abstract views Pdf views Html views

Article Menu

An Integrated Approach to a Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) Indicator for the Food Production–Consumption Chain

Abstract

Share and Cite

Article Metrics

Article Access Statistics

Article Access Map by Country/Region

Further Information

Guidelines

MDPI Initiatives

Follow MDPI