Transitions to sustainable management of phosphorus in Brazilian agriculture

Made available in DSpace on 2018-12-11T16:51:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2018-12-01 Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) Brazil's large land base is important for global food security but its high dependency on inorganic phosphorus (P) fertilizer for crop production (2.2 Tg rising up to 4.6 Tg in 2050) is not a sustainable use of a critical and price-volatile resource. A new strategic analysis of current and future P demand/supply concluded that the nation's secondary P resources which are produced annually (e.g. livestock manures, sugarcane processing residues) could potentially provide up to 20% of crop P demand by 2050 with further investment in P recovery technologies. However, the much larger legacy stores of secondary P in the soil (30 Tg in 2016 worth over $40 billion and rising to 105 Tg by 2050) could provide a more important buffer against future P scarcity or sudden P price fluctuations, and enable a transition to more sustainable P input strategies that could reduce current annual P surpluses by 65%. In the longer-term, farming systems in Brazil should be redesigned to operate profitably but more sustainably under lower soil P fertility thresholds. School of Environment Natural Resources and Geography Bangor University, Thoday Building College of Agriculture 'Luiz de Queiroz' University of São Paulo - ESALQ-USP, Av. Pádua Dias, 11. CEP Federal University of Lavras - UFLA Campus Universitário, PO Box 3037 Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation Embrapa Soils, Rua Jardim Botânico, 1024 Santa Catarina State University UDESC., Av. Luís de Camões 2090 Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation Embrapa Cerrados. BR 020, Km 18 Planaltina. PO Box 08223 São Paulo State University FCA/UNESP. Rua José Barbosa de Barros 1780, CEP 186010-307 Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation Embrapa Soybean, PO Box 231 São Paulo State University FCAV/UNESP. Via de Acesso Prof, Paulo Donato Castellane, s/n. km 5 São Paulo State University FCA/UNESP. Rua José Barbosa de Barros 1780, CEP 186010-307 São Paulo State University FCAV/UNESP. Via de Acesso Prof, Paulo Donato Castellane, s/n. km 5