EU Nitrogen Expert Panel gets off to a flyer

Probably the greatest minds in the world of Nitrogen met in Windsor, UKI between the 22-23 September. The launch of the Nitrogen Expert Panel brought the cream of knowledge from the academic, scientific, policy and industry world together with the eventual agreed aim to improve the Nitrogen Use Efficiency in the food chain in Europe.

“Previous obstacles have seen the tendency of stakeholders to work in isolation. However, bringing all the key players together under one roof to work towards consensus is a massive step.” Jacob Hansen, Director General, Fertilizers Europe.

Selected representatives from science, governmental policy and industry chaired by global leading scientist Pr Oene Oenema, from Wageningen University, “will work towards communicating a vision on how to improve the nitrogen use efficiency in the food chain in Europe, and recommend effective proposals and solutions”.

First mandate for 2014: Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) indicator

The purpose of this indicator is to provide all key-players within the food chain (legislation, policy-makers as well as farmers) with an easy but sufficiently precise indicator for NUE monitoring in order to ensure a broad stakeholder engagement. Although N-balance/N-surplus is already reported on a regular basis, existing indicators do not cover productivity and efficiency sufficiently.

First Workshop (15-16 September 2014) 

During the workshop, the EU Nitrogen Expert Panel defined the basis of a “NUE indicator system”, still based on the NUE ratio, but complemented with a set of parameters.

The outcomes of this session will be published in the coming 2 months by the means of a short policy paper followed by an official report defining the basis for developing the concept at different levels.

The results of this first session will be presented to at the Fertilizers and Nutrients Forum in the European Parliament on 9 December 2014.

Contact

Mark Cryans (/_staging)

+32 474 885 886