Presentation of Michael Hamell from the European Commission at Food, Fertilizers and Natural Resources Conference by Fertilizers Europe

The great global challenges

Climate Change

Biodiversity loss

Energy supply

Natural resources depletion

Feeding 9 billion people

Successfully addressing them is essential to a stable world. Solving one without the others, solves none.

Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe

Key Messages:

Huge increase in resource use in 20th century. Business as usual will bring rapid depletion and scarcity.

We need 4-10 fold increase in RE by 2050 which implies all resources are sustainably managed.

Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe

Steps: developing approaches to transform the economy in areas such as:

Consumption and production

Waste

Ecosystem services

Of major interest here:

Green paper on phosphorus in 2012

Communication on land use in 2014

Why is phosphorus a policy issue?

P is limited and P demand rises continuously globally.

P is easily lost throughout the production, use and waste chains.

P supplies are essential to long term food production. They are concentrated in a few regions.

In the long term, we will need to use P sources which may contain greater amounts of cadmium and eventually even uranium.

Current P supplies

P from the earth’s crust to human consumption

Cadmium levels in phosphate rock including the relative size of the reserve

Why act now?

Major education process to be undertaken

Opportunity cost of inaction - sooner we start, the more gradual action can be

Need to insert some of the solutions into the cycle of intellectual reflections and infrastructure planning - expensive otherwise

Why act now?

Synergies with resource efficiency agenda in particular

Innovation benefit to EU biotech companies – enzymes in feed and fertilizer for example

Experience on biodiversity decline and climate change shows knowledge itself is not enough to change behaviour. We must start early.

What could be done (examples)

Improve efficiency of extraction processes and use of by-products

Traditional agricultural efficiency techniques – catch crops, avoiding soil erosion etc –

And new ones, manure processing and transfer

Innovative techniques – microbial inoculation, phytase, etc

Sewage sludge, biowaste? Getting more recycling and opening up the possibilities for the organic fertilizer market

Food chain, food waste, food choices...

What could be done in a perfect world

Work on green paper to date

Several studies

P use in EU agriculture 2005

Sustainability of P resources 2010

Manure Processing activities in Europe (end 2011 publication)

NPK study (JRC, completion in early 2012)

Expert seminar spring 2011

Some results

Resources and reserves bigger then previously thought

Some regions including EU very import dependent

Considerable inefficiencies in P use

Manure processing gaining in importance

Work on green paper to date

Opportunities for efficiencies?

Agriculture

Industry

Areas for reflection

Animal production concentration

Pathways to P loss: erosion, run off leaching from saturated soil

Do our production/consumption patterns contribute to “problems”

What recycling possibilities/what barriers?

Next steps

A green paper opens discussion

We hope to publish GP in spring/summer 2012

Reaction of all stakeholders as well as EU institutions will guide future work

We invite you to contribute