MEASURES for ESRC Seminar at SRI on 20 Apr 04

1
MEASURES A Whole Farm Model to Assist
Agri-Environmental Decision Making
Adrian Williams, Daniel Sandars and Eric Audsley
(Biomathematics Group, SRI)

• Outline of the MEASURES framework
• Whole farm approach
• N cycle
• Data sources
• Case studies NVZ, pesticides NH3
• Burdens - regional and farm types
• Conclusions

Funded by Defra
2
Soils and Weather
Possible crops and workable hours
Machines and people
Constraints penalties
Environmental Processes
Silsoe Whole Farm Model
Profitability (or loss)
Crop and livestock outputs
Environmental burdens
3
Whole Farm Nitrogen Cycle

• S N Inputs S Useful N Outputs S N
  Losses

4
Whole Farm Nitrogen Cycle

• S N Inputs S Useful N Outputs S N
  Losses
• S N Losses S N Inputs - S Useful N
  Outputs

5
Whole Farm Nitrogen Cycle

• S N Inputs S Useful N Outputs S N
  Losses
• S N Losses S N Inputs - S Useful N
  Outputs
• Rotational soil transfers cancel out long term
• N losses partitioned
• Leaching (NO3 -N)
• Denitrification N2-N N2O-N
• Senescence (NH3-N)

6
Environmental Relationships and their Sources

• Nitrogen cycling
• Ammonia emissions
• Nitrate leaching
• Denitrification
• Nitrous oxide emissions
• Nitrogen (benign)
• Rotational transfers

• SUNDIAL (IACR - R Res)
• N Fix Cycle (IGER)
• MANNER (ADAS)
• Inventories
• RB209 (7th Edn)
• Literature

• Methane emissions
• Inventory

• Soil loss (P)
• Morgan, Morgan and Finney
• P balance
• Internal calculations

7
Case study baselines NVZ and NH3

• 250 ha arable with 2000 fattening pig places or
  150 dairy cattle with followers
• 10 set-aside requirement
• Light, medium and heavy soils
• 600, 800, 1000 mm annual rainfall
• Good practice followed

8
Pig manure management in NVZs
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Effects of changing the valuation of N in pig
manure
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Ammonia abatement (pigs)
11
Effects of soil type and rainfall on the costs of
ammonia abatement (/kg NH3-N abated)
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Strategies to reduce herbicide use
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Systematic differences between regions

• Variations in agronomic practice
• Balance of arable and animals
• Rainfall distribution
• Soil texture distribution
• Slope distributions
• 5 km squares

14
Useful 5 km grid squares in NUTS 1 regions
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Rainfall over the regions
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Arable cropping model and census
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Nitrogen flows on all-arable farms
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Arable Burdens, Soil Erosion
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Nitrogen flows on averaged farm types
20
Conclusions

• Unique framework to analyse whole farms
• Long term environmental burdens and
  sustainability
• Farmers react to regulation to recover profits
• Unwanted results may thus occur
• Regional burdens quantified
• Relatively small differences between regions
• SW worst for environment profit
• Mixed farms more polluting than arable
• Need to examine whole system