The EU's Farm to Fork strategy aims to reduce nutrient losses from agriculture by 50% by decreasing fertilizer use by 20%. How realistic is this target in Austria?
Elisabeth Jost et al., with a contribution from Ottavia Zoboli, have applied an integrated modelling approach to investigate the potential effects of fertilizer reductions on land use, nitrogen losses, and agricultural output of two fertilizer and four climatechange scenarios for Austria.
Key results:

•  a uniform 20% reduction in mineral N fertilizer falls short of achieving the targeted reduction in losses
• Tailored measures need to be elaborated by considering climate change as well as regional heterogeneity of prevalent farming systems and bio-physical boundary conditions

More detailed info and results in the new openaccess paper: Link, opens an external URL in a new window