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!

Phosphorus and the Sustainable Development Goals

Phosphorus = {People.Planet.Prosperity.Peace.Partnership}

This week I have had the pleasure to deliver an invited Keynote at the British Society of Soil Science annual meeting on "Soil, Water, Phosphorus and the Sustainable Development Goals".  It was an enriching, but equally worrisome intellectual experience to think about how these issues alligned and my conclusions were:

- Phosphorus feeds us!  Key to our existence on earth and transformed humanity since 1940s

- Soil P behaviour tricky!  In the long term it ‘sticks’ to soil and thus plant acquisition is complex.  Can we better use indigenous soil organic P?

- Despite, it is easily transferred to water and pollutes

- Climate change estimates are that this will accelerate

Long term – it is on a non- sustainable journey to the sea

- We are nowhere near being able to manage the P cycle and fulfil sustainable development goals!