Browsing by Author "Niemelä, Aki"

Atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases has increased significantly since the pre-industrial era. Global warming is a major issue in the modern world and it has been predicted that climate will change dramatically in the next few decades due to the growing GHG concentrations. Agriculture is a major source of GHG emissions and the EU has set a target for the agricultural sector to reduce GHG emissions. The aim of this study was to calculate GHG emissions for the plant and animal production of studied Finnish farms for the year 2013. The aim was also to analyse the effects of reduced synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use to agricultural GHG emissions with help of two co-operation model for the farms. Another goal was to develop an Excel-based calculator to calculate GHG emissions from farms. Data for this study was collected from 9 actual Finnish farms. The farms were paired and simulated co-operation models were applied. GHG emissions were calculated with developed FarmCALC 2.1 – calculator for the farm pairs before and after co-operation. Co-operation models reduced the GHG emissions from plant production exiting the farms (11–23 %) and pig meat production (13–20 %). But there was no significant effects in milk and beef production. All effects of the co-operation models to the GHG emissions of animal production were based on the changes in feeding and in GHG emissions of feed production. Joint effect of these two were the reason that no changes in GHG emissions of milk and beef production were observed. There was also some uncertainties in calculation method and the method was sensitive to yield changes so there are some uncertainties in calculated GHG emissions. Despite of these uncertainties, results of this study correlate well with previous studies and results were encouraging. It is recommended to study more about the effects of co-operation and reduced synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use to agricultural GHG emission. This study was part of Sustainable Intensification –project, ”Kasvinviljely- ja kotieläintilojen yhteistyö – avain tuotannon kestävään tehostamiseen” (KESTE).