Nutrient balance as a sustainability indicator of different
agro-environments in Italy
where environmental pressures and agricultural activities combine and heighten the need to optimise
farming strategies, we recommend using detailed spatial target analysis.
In this paper, we propose a methodology for identifying different agro-environments, test that method
in a case-study territory in the western Po River plain (the largest and most intensive agricultural area in
Italy), and then calculate the nutrient budget indicators of these defined agro-environments as a means
to assess environmental sustainability.
We identified five Macro Land Units (MLUs) representing five different agro-environments from official
datasets and territorial surveys, detected and quantified land use, crop productivity, and fertilisation
management in these MLUs, and calculated nutrient budgets according to the IRENA European methodology.
As expected, the highest nutrient surpluses (103, 39, and 95 kg ha−1 for N, P, and K, respectively)
were detected in the most intensely managed area. N surpluses were attributed to excess mineral inputs
and P surpluses to excess organic inputs. At the territorial scale, the manure N load was far below the
170 kg ha−1 threshold; at the crop scale, maize showed the least-optimised fertilisation management.
This work suggests that GIS-based analysis of environmental pressures of agricultural activities at a
sub-regional level is useful for identifying areas and crops for which fertilization must be well managed.
The proposed methodology depends on accurate collection and collation of farm data into GIS databases;
public authorities should promote investment in planning and managing data collection in agriculture.
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