Tool for Monitoring and Evaluating the On-farm Environment Management and Nutrient Use on Finnish Cattle Farms - Water and Agriculture: Sustainability, Markets and Policies - page 279

Chapter 18.
Tool for Monitoring and Evaluating
the On-farm Environment Management and Nutrient Use
on Finnish Cattle Farms

Elina Nikkola 1 and Kaisa Tolonen 2

Nitrogen and phosphorus balances as well as the Usability Classification of Waters are
used as national indicators to monitor the trends in nutrient use and their effects on the
environment. In addition to national rules, regulations and actions, voluntary approaches
to minimise nutrient leaching as well as more specific, farm-level indicators have been
developed.
One example of such approaches is the voluntary Cattle Farm Environmental Auditing
Tool (CFEAT), which helps a farmer to optimise and benchmark certain farm
management activities on the farm level in order to achieve more environmentally-
friendly management practices. CFEAT has been created and developed by the
Association of Rural Advisory Centres (ProAgria ARAC), which is a non-governmental
agricultural expert organisation in Finland. CFEAT helps farmers to classify and
evaluate their normal, day-to-day cultivation activities (nutrient and manure use, tillage)
and animal husbandry. More emphasis is given to activities which have the most
beneficial effects on the environment and animal welfare and which go beyond the
mandatory level. Evaluation is carried out together with a ProAgria ARAC adviser and
the results, combined with farm-level quality or environment systems, help farmers to find
concrete measures and targets for developing farm management practices.
The use of CFEAT started already in 1995. The number of dairy and cattle farms
evaluated by means of CFEAT by 2005 is 1337, which is about 1% of the total number of
dairy and cattle farms in Finland, but the number has been rising steadily. The results
concerning nutrient leaching from arable area are promising: the nitrogen effluent has
decreased, on average, by 4-15% and solid phosphorus by 5-13% as a result of the
introduction of better and more efficient methods for the management of nutrients and use
and handling of livestock manure. The load of soluble phosphorus is about the same as
before.

1.

Senior Officer, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Oslo, Finland.

2. Development Manager, ProAgria, Association of Rural Advisory Centres (ARAC), Vantaa, Finland.