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Agricultural management practices in China enhance nitrogen sustainability and benefit human health

Nature Food (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

The potential of enhanced agricultural management practices to drive sustainability is rarely quantified at grassroots level. Here we analyse nitrogen use and loss in Chinese cropland, drawing from data collected in 2,238,550 sites in two national agricultural pollution source censuses from 2007 to 2017. We find an upswing of 10% in crop yields and an 8% reduction in nitrogen pollution during this period, owing to the promotion and adoption of various management practices (including the combination of organic and chemical fertilizers, straw recycling and deep placement of fertilizer). These practices have collectively contributed to an 18% increase in nitrogen use efficiency in the country. By fully embracing them, we project that annual cropland pollution could be further reduced by up to 1.4 Mt of nitrogen without compromising crop yields. Environmental and human health benefits are projected to consistently outweigh implementation costs in the future, with total benefits reaching US$15 billion.

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Fig. 1: Changes in total nitrogen use and loss, and agricultural management practices, from 2007 to 2017 in China.
Fig. 2: Spatial changes in nitrogen use from 2007 to 2017.
Fig. 3: Spatial changes in nitrogen loss to air and water from 2007 to 2017.
Fig. 4: Spatial changes in agricultural management practices from 2007 to 2017.
Fig. 5: Future scenario and cost and benefit.

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Data availability

The database of the two agricultural pollution source censuses is available upon request to the authors. Other data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and in Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The spatial analysis was conducted using ArcGIS version 10.2 and ArcGIS Pro 2.5.0, while statistical analysis used StataMP 17 and MATLAB R2021a. All code is available upon request.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42325707 and 42261144001) and the National Key Research and Development Project of China (2022YFE0138200).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Jiakun Duan, Hongbin Liu.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Jiakun Duan, Xiuming Zhang, Chenchen Ren, Chen Wang, Luxi Cheng, Jianming Xu & Baojing Gu

  2. Policy Simulation Laboratory, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Jiakun Duan, Xiuming Zhang, Chenchen Ren, Chen Wang, Luxi Cheng & Baojing Gu

  3. Key Laboratory of Nonpoint Source Pollution Control, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China

    Hongbin Liu

  4. Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA, USA

    Chenchen Ren

  5. Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Agricultural Resources and Environment, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Jianming Xu & Baojing Gu

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Contributions

B.G. conceived the research and revised the paper. J.D. designed the experiment, analysed the data and wrote the paper. H.L. provided the data of the agricultural pollution source censuses, and due to the critical role of data, he and J.D. contributed equally. X.Z., C.R., C.W. and L.C. helped in the analysis work and revised the paper. J.X. revised the paper.

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Correspondence to Baojing Gu.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Food thanks Zhenling Cui, Gary Gan and Longlong Xia for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Relations between management practices and nitrogen use.

a, c, e, g shows the relations between fertilizer, manure, deep-placement, straw incorporation and N harvest, respectively. While b, d, f, h represents the relations of the four independent variables and NUEc. Fertilizer is nitrogen in fertilizer; Deep-placement is nitrogen in fertilizer and manure that is deep-placement divided by total; Manure is nitrogen in manure divided by summation of fertilizer and manure; Straw incorporation is nitrogen in straw recycle to cropland. Nharvest (kg N/ha) is nitrogen in harvest crops, NUEc (%) is nitrogen in harvest crops divided by nitrogen input in fertilizer. County-level regional effect, crop type, and year effects have been controlled in all regression equations and all the variables are log-transformed. The P value is assessed using a two-sided t-test. No adjustments were made for multiple comparisons.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 2 Fertilizer, manure, manure percentage, deep-placement percentage, straw incorporation change for different scenarios toward 2050.

a, Fertilizer change. b, Manure change. c, Manure percentage change. d, Straw incorporation change. e, Deep-placement percentage change. BAU, business as usual, assumes no interventions; POL, increase organic fertilizer use at a rate of 5% every 5 years and replace inorganic amount; SUG, fertilizer and manure are jointly reduced to recommended nitrogen application rate; M50 scenarios would increase manure percent to 50% gradually; SUG50 is combined of SUG and M50. The figures show specific values for these independent variables for different scenarios that are used for scenario analysis.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 Nitrogen loss for per hectare and in total under different agricultural management practices towards 2050.

a, c, e, g show the per hectare value for N2O emission, NH3 emission, nitrogen leaching, and nitrogen runoff, respectively. While b, d, f, h represent the total value for these loss indicators. BAU, business as usual, assumes no interventions; POL, increase organic fertilizer use at a rate of 5% every 5 years and replace inorganic amount; SUG, fertilizer and manure are jointly reduced to recommended nitrogen application rate; M50 scenarios would increase manure percent to 50% gradually; SUG50 is combined of SUG and M50. As we used fertilizer and manure amount with emission factors and loss ratios, all of these curves follow a similar trend.

Source data

Extended Data Table 1 Coefficients of agricultural management practice to nitrogen harvest and nitrogen use efficiency of cropland for vegetables and fruits, and cash crops
Full size table
Extended Data Table 2 Coefficients of agricultural management practice to nitrogen harvest and nitrogen use efficiency of cropland for all crops in 2007 and 2017
Full size table
Extended Data Table 3 Coefficients of agricultural management practice to nitrogen harvest and nitrogen use efficiency of cropland for grains in 2007 and 2017
Full size table
Extended Data Table 4 Coefficients of agricultural management practice to nitrogen harvest and nitrogen use efficiency of cropland for vegetables and fruits in 2007 and 2017
Full size table
Extended Data Table 5 Coefficients of agricultural management practice to nitrogen harvest and nitrogen use efficiency of cropland for cash crops in 2007 and 2017
Full size table
Extended Data Table 6 Extreme point for Relations between nitrogen in harvest and management practice for different crops
Full size table

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods, Figs. 1–7, Tables 1–16 and References.

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Source Data Fig. 5

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Source Data Extended Data Fig. 1

Statistical source data.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 2

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Source Data Extended Data Fig. 3

Statistical source data.

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Duan, J., Liu, H., Zhang, X. et al. Agricultural management practices in China enhance nitrogen sustainability and benefit human health. Nat Food (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-024-00953-8

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