We have participated in the EU CAP Network Seminar "Smart circular farming to address high energy and fertiliser prices", held in Porto in early December 2022. There is a need to focus on using local resources efficiently, reducing input requirements for production and recycling agricultural wastes and by-products. We need, with other words, to replace chemical fertilisers with organic fertilisers that are produced locally. To succeed with that, we must first of all map and quantify the available wastes resources, the NP Nutrient Use Efficiency of organic fertilisers must be raised from the current level of about 50% by use of organic waste processing technologies like anaerobic digestion and slurry acidification, the use of organic fertilisers for crop production shall be based on fertiliser planning, and a balanced use of N and P toward crop needs require a much wider use of solid/liquid separation of e.g. digestate. Reallly "low-hanging fruits" would be a ban if heavy polluting practices and processing technologies like composting and nitrification-denitrification.
It sounds simple and it is simple. The barriers we work against are vested interests in increased "business as usual", it takes time to change practices, investment capital is necessary for processing technology, new standards are required to support the envisaged development, and legal revisions must be made to adapt to changed policy targets. The seminar gave possibility for fruitfull policy dialogues with the EU CAP Network officials and a wide variety of stakeholders from all EU Member States, which will surely have an impact on future activities to jointly overcome these barriers.
ORGANE offers in this connection
https://www.cropmanager.eu, which is developed for supporting a higher use or complete switch to fertilisation with organic fertilisers, and it gives crop producers new tools for measuring the consequences of their crop production on nitrogen and phosphorus nutrient balances and NP Nutrient Use Efficiences, while in the same time including the option to calculate the carbonfarming result, and monitor CNP flows on the farm. ORGANE also maintain
https://www.agrotechnologyatlas.eu, which holds scientifically validated information about technologies for reducing the climate impact and environmental load of farming, and secure an optimal resource economy in primary food production.