Summary paper on alternative fertilisers

Summary

Fertilisation in organic agriculture is today highly dependent on the import of external nutrients and organic matter by fertilisers derived from conventional farming and conventional food industries. Within Deliverable (D) 5.1 of the project Organic-PLUS the current use of peat in growing media, plastic for mulching and fertiliser inputs in organic agriculture was already addressed, followed by a report discussing possible alternatives to these contentious inputs (D5.2). The current D5.6 develops the topic further and shows in more detail the results of research on the use of alternative non-contentious fertilisers conducted in Task 5.4, ‘Alternatives to contentious sources of fertility’, of Work package 5 SOIL in Organic-PLUS. The objectives of Task 5.4 were a) to characterise relevant alternatives for contentious inputs for physio-chemical and other characteristics (e.g. availability), and study how well they function compared with existing contentious inputs (manure from conventional farming, commercial fertilisers from conventional sources) and b) to develop system approaches to integrate the alternatives in existing organic cropping systems/ sequences. The characteristics of the individual fertilisers as well as short recommendations for their application in practice are presented in D5.7 (a technical report) along an overview of nutrient concentrations and other essential characteristics of the fertilisers tested.