Enhancing productivity in a changing climate?

Earlier this month I had the pleasure to be invited to talk at the 2018 Amarican Society of Agronomy and Crop Science Society of America joint meeting in Baltimore, USA.  The session was entitled a Megaposium on 'Cross Cutting Issues on Environmental Policy' organized by Jeppe H. Kjaersgaard and my close colleague Doug Smith.  Doug was kind enough to introduce me.  











When preparing the talk I was excited to have to think about integreated response of phosphorus and (less common for me....) nitrogen too.  It was a useful experience and my conclusions were:

• Huge reductions in phosphorus inputs are required to maintain water quality - what does this mean for production?
• Nitrogen emissions contribute to climate change in the short and medium term, plus N emissions in turn respond to climate (it’s complicated!)
• Phosphorus emissions are mostly a responder to changes in rainfall (climate effect is more long term?)
• We need to determine the interactions….
• Enhancing productivity and environmental quality in a changing climate is going to be a massive challenge in the future.

A copy of the online talk can be viewed by clicking here. 

After the session Doug took me to lunch along with some other colleagues that included Amy Shober, always great to catch up with old friends!  Thaks for the inviation folks!