Saving Fertiliser, Higher Income, Better Environment

SAIN Working Group 1 held the final workshop of the project “Improving Livelihoods on Shaanxi Farms by reducing non-point N Pollution through Improved Nutrient Management” on 11-12 March in Yangling, China. This three-year project was funded by Dfid, Defra and FCO of UK government under the International Sustainable Development Fund (ISDF), led by Prof David Powlson of Rothamsted Research and Prof Tong Yanan of Northwest A&F University. Other collaborators of the project include Prof David Norse of University College London, and Dr Yuelai Lu of University of East Anglia.

The overall objective of this project is to provide access for poor farmers to information that will enable them to use N fertilizer in a rational way in order to increase crop yields and economic returns whilst avoiding environmental pollution and wastage of resources. This commonly occurs due to over-use of nitrogen fertilizer. The project did this through developing the practical tools which could be used by extension workers and staff of farmer associations to communicate with farmers. The tools developed include rapid field measurement of soil nitrate, nutrient budget and profit calculation. On-farm experiments were carried out to demonstrate the application of these tools.

The workshop was attended by over 80 participants from county agricultural extension centres, farmer associations, research institutes, representatives of Shaanxi provincial government. John Warburton and Su Zhang of the DFID-Beijing office also attended the workshop.