IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jlands/v9y2020i6p173-d364504.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Benefits Are Limited with High Nitrogen Fertiliser Rates in Kikuyu-Ryegrass Pasture Systems

Author

Listed:
  • Charné Viljoen

    (Department of Agronomy, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch 7602, South Africa)

  • Janke van der Colf

    (Western Cape Department of Agriculture, Outeniqua Research Farm, George 6529, South Africa)

  • Pieter Andreas Swanepoel

    (Department of Agronomy, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch 7602, South Africa)

Abstract

Nitrogen (N) fertiliser is applied to pastures in dairy farming systems to ensure productivity, but it is an expensive input that could be damaging to the environment if used excessively. In the southern Cape region of South Africa, N fertilisation guidelines for pastures were developed under conditions different to current management practices, yet dairy producers still base fertiliser programmes on these outdated guidelines. This study aimed to determine the efficiencies of N fertilisation. Various N fertiliser rates (0, 20, 40, 60 and 80 kg ha −1 applied after grazing), as well as a variable rate according to the nitrate concentration in the soil water solution, were assessed on a grazed pasture. Dairy cows returned to a pasture approximately 11 times per year. Pasture production showed a minimal response to fertilisation within each season. The most responsive parameters to fertilisation were the herbage crude protein content, soil mineral N content and urease activity. Reduced microbial activity was observed when more than 40 kg N ha −1 was applied. When considering the soil total mineral N content, N is used inefficiently at rates above 40 kg N ha −1 . The results are indicative of an N saturated system that provides a rationale for reducing N fertiliser rates.

Suggested Citation

  • Charné Viljoen & Janke van der Colf & Pieter Andreas Swanepoel, 2020. "Benefits Are Limited with High Nitrogen Fertiliser Rates in Kikuyu-Ryegrass Pasture Systems," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(6), pages 1-20, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:9:y:2020:i:6:p:173-:d:364504
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/6/173/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/6/173/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark A. Sutton & Oene Oenema & Jan Willem Erisman & Adrian Leip & Hans van Grinsven & Wilfried Winiwarter, 2011. "Too much of a good thing," Nature, Nature, vol. 472(7342), pages 159-161, April.
    2. Pretty, J. N. & Brett, C. & Gee, D. & Hine, R. E. & Mason, C. F. & Morison, J. I. L. & Raven, H. & Rayment, M. D. & van der Bijl, G., 2000. "An assessment of the total external costs of UK agriculture," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 113-136, August.
    3. Monjardino, M. & McBeath, T. & Ouzman, J. & Llewellyn, R. & Jones, B., 2015. "Farmer risk-aversion limits closure of yield and profit gaps: A study of nitrogen management in the southern Australian wheatbelt," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 108-118.
    4. Adenuga, A. & Davis, J. & Hutchinson, G. & Donnellan, T. & Patton, M., 2018. "Valuing Agricultural Externalities: Nitrogen Surplus in the Dairy Sector on the Island of Ireland," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277434, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    5. Smith, Andrew P. & Christie, Karen M. & Rawnsley, Richard P. & Eckard, Richard J., 2018. "Fertiliser strategies for improving nitrogen use efficiency in grazed dairy pastures," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 274-282.
    6. Christie, Karen M. & Smith, Andrew P. & Rawnsley, Richard P. & Harrison, Matthew T. & Eckard, Richard J., 2018. "Simulated seasonal responses of grazed dairy pastures to nitrogen fertilizer in SE Australia: Pasture production," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 36-47.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Motsedisi P. Phohlo & Pieter A. Swanepoel & Stefan Hinck, 2022. "Excessive Nitrogen Fertilization Is a Limitation to Herbage Yield and Nitrogen Use Efficiency of Dairy Pastures in South Africa," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(7), pages 1-11, April.
    2. Palo Francis Loke & Elmarie Kotzé & Christiaan Cornelius Du Preez, 2022. "Soil Organic Matter Storage in Irrigated Tsitsikamma Dairy Farms with Minimum Tilled Pasture Mixtures: Case Studies," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-21, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Meyer-Aurich, Andreas & Karatay, Yusuf Nadi, 2019. "Effects of uncertainty and farmers' risk aversion on optimal N fertilizer supply in wheat production in Germany," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 130-139.
    2. Monjardino, Marta & Harrison, Matthew T. & DeVoil, Peter & Rodriguez, Daniel & Sadras, Victor O., 2022. "Agronomic and on-farm infrastructure adaptations to manage economic risk in Australian irrigated broadacre systems: A case study," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 269(C).
    3. Christie, K.M. & Smith, A.P. & Rawnsley, R.P. & Harrison, M.T. & Eckard, R.J., 2020. "Simulated seasonal responses of grazed dairy pastures to nitrogen fertilizer in SE Australia: N loss and recovery," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    4. Ara, Iffat & Turner, Lydia & Harrison, Matthew Tom & Monjardino, Marta & deVoil, Peter & Rodriguez, Daniel, 2021. "Application, adoption and opportunities for improving decision support systems in irrigated agriculture: A review," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 257(C).
    5. Jongeneel, Roel & Polman, Nico & van der Ham, Corinda, 2014. "Costs and benefits associated with the externalities generated by Dutch agriculture," 2014 International Congress, August 26-29, 2014, Ljubljana, Slovenia 182705, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    6. Eric Tollens, 2004. "Biodiversity versus transgenic sugar beet: the one euro question," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 31(1), pages 1-18, March.
    7. Thomas Vendryes, 2014. "Peasants Against Private Property Rights: A Review Of The Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 971-995, December.
    8. Jules Pretty, 1999. "Can Sustainable Agriculture Feed Africa? New Evidence on Progress, Processes and Impacts," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 1(3), pages 253-274, September.
    9. Jónsson, Jón Örvar G. & Davíðsdóttir, Brynhildur & Nikolaidis, Nikolaos P. & Giannakis, Georgios V., 2019. "Tools for Sustainable Soil Management: Soil Ecosystem Services, EROI and Economic Analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 109-119.
    10. Adrian Sadłowski & Wioletta Wrzaszcz & Katarzyna Smędzik-Ambroży & Anna Matras-Bolibok & Anna Budzyńska & Marek Angowski & Stefan Mann, 2021. "Direct Payments and Sustainable Agricultural Development—The Example of Poland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(23), pages 1-20, November.
    11. Kovacevic, Vujadin & Wesseler, Justus, 2010. "Cost-effectiveness analysis of algae energy production in the EU," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 5749-5757, October.
    12. Vandermeulen, V. & Van Huylenbroeck, G., 2008. "Designing trans-disciplinary research to support policy formulation for sustainable agricultural development," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 352-361, October.
    13. Tait, Peter R. & Cullen, Ross, 2006. "Some External Costs of Dairy Farming in Canterbury," 2006 Conference (50th), February 8-10, 2006, Sydney, Australia 109595, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society.
    14. Lv, Yao & Gu, Shu-zhong & Guo, Dong-mei, 2010. "Valuing environmental externalities from rice-wheat farming in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(7), pages 1436-1442, May.
    15. Gregor Devine & Michael Furlong, 2007. "Insecticide use: Contexts and ecological consequences," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 24(3), pages 281-306, September.
    16. Chiara M. Travisi & Peter Nijkamp, 2009. "Managing environmental risk in agriculture: a systematic perspective on the potential of quantitative policy-oriented risk valuation," International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 11(1/2/3), pages 27-46.
    17. Wei, Yongping & White, Robert & Hu, Kelin & Willett, Ian, 2010. "Valuing the environmental externalities of oasis farming in Left Banner, Alxa, China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 2151-2157, September.
    18. Simon Anastasiadis & Marie-Laure Nauleau & Suzi Kerr & Tim Cox & Kit Rutherford, 2011. "Does Complex Hydrology Require Complex Water Quality Policy? NManager Simulations for Lake Rotorua," Working Papers 11_14, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    19. Ledgard, Stewart F. & Wei, Sha & Wang, Xiaoqin & Falconer, Shelley & Zhang, Nannan & Zhang, Xiying & Ma, Lin, 2019. "Nitrogen and carbon footprints of dairy farm systems in China and New Zealand, as influenced by productivity, feed sources and mitigations," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 213(C), pages 155-163.
    20. Centner, Terence J. & Brewer, Brady & Leal, Isaac, 2018. "Reducing damages from sulfoxaflor use through mitigation measures to increase the protection of pollinator species," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 70-76.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jlands:v:9:y:2020:i:6:p:173-:d:364504. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.