Europe has a serious imbalance in terms of availability of nutrients for agriculture. Climatic and orographic conditions have led to the separation of agriculture and livestock production. The need to reduce food production costs has led to the centralization of livestock and agricultural production systems, leading to geographic nutrient imbalances; while areas with low crop yield potential have transitioned to intensive livestock farming relying on food imports, high- yielding crop areas in many cases have not introduced livestock in the agro-system. Thus, Europe has been zoned, with areas with nutrient excess (high livestock areas, areas close to the coast, orographically complicated areas, etc.) and areas of high nutrient demand (areas where intensive cropping has depleted soil nutrients, soil organic matter, caused decreases in microbiological diversity, etc
Work package 2, leaded by NEIKER, aims to update the nutrient imbalance in European soils and, at the same time, to gather information, opinions and sensitivities of the different actors (producers, politicians, farmers, etc.) related to biological fertilisers using fish waste. For this, the partners involved in each of the tasks are collecting data from different sources, on the one hand, sources such as Eurostat and/or national statistical institutes to develop an updated map of nutrients, crops, soils and waste sources. On the other hand, surveys carried out in the different countries to study the opinion of the different actors, their interests, concerns, etc. All this considering the regulations affecting the use of these residues in each participating country and trying to understand the differences and the way these regulations can affect the production process and the final products.
The comparative analysis of European and non-European regulations will be the first output of this work package, which will be available by 2021 August.
