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 280

Background

Finland has abundant water resources. Using the Water Poverty Index, 3 researchers
from the United Kingdom's Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and experts from the World
Water Council found Finland to be the highest-ranking country in their list of the world's
water-rich nations. Only 2.2% of the country's total renewable water resources are
actually used each year. Water is taken mainly to meet the needs of industry and public
water supply.
The role of irrigation in agriculture is quite insignificant in Finland, and in practice it
is mainly used in the cultivation of vegetables. Non-point leaching of nutrients from
arable lands is a far greater problem than the use of waters.
Fertilisers are used on arable land to get a higher yield of a better quality and to
maintain or improve the fertility and production capacity of the soil. However, each year
part of the nutrients contained in fertilisers is left in the land, because nutrients are bound,
for example, to the roots of the plants which are not collected along with the crop.
Nutrients left in the land are susceptible to leaching and erosion.
In Finland the use of fertilisers, tillage and handling of animal manure are regulated
through various kinds of statutes and recommendations, but in certain regions the
eutrophication of lakes and rivers located in farming areas is still a problem. It is
estimated that 50% of the total nitrogen and 60% of phosphorus in watercourses derives
from agricultural production.
The National Water Protection Programme until 2005 (MoE 1998) sets a strict
minimum requirement according to which the loading from agriculture must be reduced
by at least 50% from the level of 1990-1993. In the early 1990s the average loading was
1.1 kg/ha of total phosphorus and 15 kg/ha of total nitrogen per year (Vuorenmaa et al.
2002), and efforts were made to reduce this, in particular, through agri-environmental
support and the Nitrates Directive of the EU (EU 1991). According to the mid-term
evaluation of the Water Protection Programme, the reduction objective set for arable
farming cannot be reached, even if the practical farming methods have become more
environmentally-friendly.
The nutrient loss into the land is not only a threat to the state of waters but they are
also an economic loss to farmers. For example, measurements carried out in Southern
Finland in 1997-2003 (Marttila et al. 2005) showed that the average nitrogen surplus left
in the land each year was 240,000 kg, and the phosphorus surplus was 35,000 kg (size of
the catchment area was 213,71 km 2 , of which 25% was arable land). The costs of the
nutrients which were not utilised totalled about 155,000

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difficult for the farmers to perceive where the agricultural loading of waters comes from,
and how strong it is.

Nutrient balances

Nutrient balance is a good method for reducing nutrient leaching in the long term,
because they show how the nutrients are being used, what the quantities are, how the
nutrients move, and where losses may be created. There are several types of nutrient
balances, for example, farm-gate balance, field balance, cattle balance and manure
3. World Water Council and UK's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, 2002.