Agriculture practices strongly depend on the availability of resources, such as energy, water and nutrients, in order to ensure their long-term sustainability. Of the 176 million hectares of arable land in the EU, 76% is fertilised. European farmers rely on the continuous supply of mined, non-renewable phosphorus and energy-intensive nitrogen. Yet, the use of mineral fertilisers has resulted in a depletion of resources and pollution of the environment. Consequently, there is an urgent need to improve the availability and efficient use of nitrogen and phosphorus. To achieve this, the implementation of (near to) commercial nutrient management and recovery methods are of key importance for the sustainability and circularity of the EU agriculture industry.

NUTRIMAN is a Nutrient Management and Nutrient Recovery Thematic Network that has been established to address this specific issue. Funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, it aims to compile and disseminate “ready-for-practice” recovered bio-based fertiliser products, practices and technologies that are yet to be implemented by the EU agriculture industry. It will create new opportunities for farmers to develop connections between applied researchers, with practical technologies, and farming practice in the priority area of nutrient management and nutrient recovery. NUTRIMAN takes a bottom-up approach in identifying incentives and bottlenecks for adoption and prioritising the technologies/products, to ensure that they are widely implemented. The project targets the large-scale uptake of the recovered N/P innovative fertilisers produced from unexploited organic or secondary raw materials in line with the circular economy model. It also aims to ensure that these technologies are used efficiently and effectively by farmers, from both economic and environmental standpoints.

During the project, mature nitrogen and phosphorus recovery technologies and novel nitrogen and phosphorus fertiliser products and practices will be gathered from applied scientific programmes and common industry practices. These will be inventoried and evaluated, with the best approaches made available as practice-oriented abstracts in EIP-AGRI format. To ensure that these results are efficiently disseminated, the abstracts will be made available in 8 languages on the NUTRIMAN website and will be used during demonstrations and workshops, to be organised for the farmers. This will result in the successful deployment of the vast reservoir of existing scientific/practical knowledge on the N/P recovery theme.

NUTRIMAN is a €2million project that will run for 30 months starting 1 October 2018. Coordinated by Terra Humana in Hungary, the consortium consists of 14 partners and 4 associated partners from Hungary, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Poland. The kick-off meeting was held at the Bureau Européen de l'Agriculture Française in Brussels on 25-26 October 2018.

For more information visit the NUTRIMAN website.