Reducing Nitrous Oxide Emissions From Smallholder Farmer Agriculture Through Site Specific Nutrient Management

Full citation:

Dreyfus, Gabrielle, Caitlan Frederick, Emily Larkin, Yifan Powers, and Jagori Chatterjee. 2023. “Reducing Nitrous Oxide Emissions From Smallholder Farmer Agriculture Through Site Specific Nutrient Management.” Precision Development. https://precisiondev.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/IGSDPxD-Reducing-nitrous-oxide-emissions-02-06-23-2.pdf

Authors:

Gabrielle Dreyfus, Caitlan Frederick, Emily Larkin, Yifan Powers, Jagori Chatterje

Links:

https://precisiondev.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/IGSDPxD-Reducing-nitrous-oxide-emissions-02-06-23-2.pdf

Abstract:

As with almost all GHG emissions linked to anthropogenic processes, N₂O emissions have increased significantly in recent decades. Agriculture is the main driver for these increases, with up to 71% of the increase in emissions from the 1980s to 2007–2016 coming from direct agricultural emissions. In particular, the use of nitrogen fertilizer is a key reason for the burden of increasing atmospheric N₂O . When nitrogen fertilizer is applied in excess or at the wrong time or place, its composite nitrogen becomes more susceptible to losses, for example through N₂O emissions. Changing farmers’ nitrogen fertilizer practices through an approach known as Site Specific Nutrient Management can substantially increase the efficiency of fertilizer application, and thus have a significant impact on N₂O mitigation. Most smallholder farmers, however, continue to rely on their own judgement or blanket nitrogen fertilizer recommendations, which can miss critical variations in the needs of soil and crops. This inefficient use of nitrogen not only contributes to N₂O emissions, but also subjects farmers to nitrogen underuse, which leads to yield gaps, as well as overuse, which adversely affects farmer profits and contributes to water and land toxicity through other types of nitrogen losses. This review provides an overview of the challenges, and the accessible, low-cost, and user-friendly tools that are an opportunity for farmers in the Global South to use nitrogen more efficiently.