Nitrogen balance is a predictor of farm business performance in the English Farm Business Survey

Peer reviewed: True
Acknowledgements: Thanks to the FBS Co-operators who willing gave of their time to take part in this survey, and to the Research Officers (ROs) from Rural Business Research who undertook the interviews with FBS Co-operators. Finally, the authors wish to thank Ian Lonsdale, Jo Hutchinson, Alison Wray, and the Defra Farming Statistics team for their time and thoughtful discussion when reviewing this work, as well as the reviewers for their constructive comments.
Global environmental sustainability and food security are fundamental societal issues, and most crop production relies upon inputs from organic or inorganic nitrogen sources. Previous research in the Global North has demonstrated a typical over application of nitrogen across global agriculture with substantial negative impacts on the environment. The objective of this work was to draw on English Farm Business Survey (FBS) data of non-organic General Cropping and Cereal farms to explore the relationship between farm gate nitrogen balance, fertilizer application advice and farm business performance. A mixed effects generalized modeling approach was used to partition the variance into random (such as year, or farm ID) and fixed effects (those of interest). Whilst the financial performance of farm businesses is subject to high variance and multiple drivers, a negative relationship was detected between business performance and farm gate nitrogen balance, we demonstrate that nitrogen lost to the environment of >60 kg per hectare is associated with a significant negative impact on farm performance. Supplier-provided fertilizer advice was also associated with reduced farm performance. These results imply a positive effect on farm performance of enhancing on-farm understanding of crop nutrient requirements through the provision of accredited fertilizer advice. Within the stated bounds our model demonstrates good predictivity on randomly subsetted data, and is presented as a tool for use in scenario modeling of interventions such as agri-environment schemes, Natural Capital and Ecosystems Assessment, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.