Faruk Djodjic is unusual in several respects. Apart from the fact that he came to Sweden as a young refugee from Bosnia only ten years ago, he is one of just a handful of people doing research on phosphorus. Along with around a hundred fellow scientists, he is helping to achieve the FOOD 21 programme´s goal of sustainable food production - for the benefit of both producers and consumers.Very briefly, FOOD 21’s objective is sustainable development from plough to plate. Or you could turn it the other way round: when we visit our local supermarket, we should be able to feel confident that the food we buy is healthy and free from toxic chemicals, and has been produced without causing harm to animals, the soil or surface waters. Or that getting it onto the supermarket shelves has not involved unnecessary consumption of finite natural resources. Resources like phosphorus, an element essential for both plants and animals.
The problem is that it is difficult for farmers to supply just the right amount of it to their land, so that it is taken up by crops and not simply washed into lakes and streams. That problem - judging what is ‘just the right amount´ - is the one Faruk Djodjic has turned his attention to. But getting to this point - to developing a phosphorus indexing tool for farmers, to doing research as part of FOOD 21 - has been anything but straightforward.
Born and raised in a town in northernBosnia, Djodjic was studying at Sarajevo University’s Faculty of Agriculture when war broke out in 1993. Aged 24, he fled to Sweden with an almost complete degree in soil and plant science.
‘I applied for and got a place at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), where I could count two-thirds of my course in Sarajevo towards a Swedish degree.´
Interdisciplinary work appealed
Having gained his MSc in soil science, Djodjic undertook a small project on phosphorus. Around the same time, he heard about FOOD 21, applied, was called for interview - and was accepted. He attended a workshop at which most of the participants were postgraduate students from different disciplines, and began to appreciate the potential of an interdisciplinary approach.
‘It was good to know you were part of something bigger. And it was interesting to study phosphorus, rather than nitrogen, on which much more research had been done and a lot of theses and other literature written,´ Djodjic explains, returning to the reasons that make phosphorus research so important: the fact that phosphorus is needed to ensure good harvests; the risk of eutrophication of surface waters; and the limited availability of this nutrient (which is obtained from the mineral apatite).
Swedish arable soils used to be poorly supplied with phosphorus, but in the 1940s, 50s and 60s they were heavily over-fertilized, with the result that levels are now high. Which is why care has to be taken not to apply more than is necessary.
Faruk Djodjic’s doctoral thesis showed that eutrophication of lakes is due not only to surface run-off of phosphorus, from fields into streams, but also - depending on the type of soil involved - to leaching through the soil. In his experiments, no less than four kilograms of phosphorus per hectare was lost in this way from clay soils, compared with just 56 grams per hectare from sandy soils. This was because water takes a long time to trickle down through a sandy soil - allowing phosphorus to be absorbed by soil particles - but passes rapidly through the large cracks in a clay soil. Another experiment showed that phosphorus losses could be reduced even further by incorporating the fertilizer into the soil, rather than simply applying it to the surface.
Risk assessment software
Since arable soils vary in their significance for phosphorus leaching, quite a lot would be gained if action could be targeted on areas where it would do most good. Which brings us back to the phosphorus index, geared to Swedish conditions, which Djodjic and his colleagues at SLU are developing. It is a tool for risk assessment at the field level, in the form of a computer program, which looks quite simple when demonstrated on screen.
On the basis of a limited set of data keyed in by the user, it is possible to find out how great the risk is of over- or under-fertilization. Headings include soil composition, surface water inlets, tillage, yield, timing of fertilizer applications, incorporation, PSI (a measure of the amount of phosphorus bound in the soil), soil structure etc.
Once all the data have been entered, the software produces a recommendation and states whether the soil is getting too much or too little fertilizer. The output also includes a description in ordinary words of the soil concerned.
‘We don’t just want to assess risks and make recommendations, we also want to disseminate knowledge, explain and give advice. And that has to be done in a very user-friendly way.´
The Swedish Board of Agriculture is interested and may soon be carrying out tests of its own and providing feedback. To begin with, the main users will be advisers at the Board of Agriculture, county administrative boards and county agricultural societies, for whom SLU plans to hold courses - but eventually the target audience will of course be widened to include individual farmers.
Faruk Djodjic points to a beautiful wallchart showing profiles of different soil types with different phosphorus requirements. It contains roughly the same information as the indexing tool, but is not of any practical use. Not until it has been ‘translated´ into a user-friendly instrument - the phosphorus index that will be ready for action by the end of 2004. According to Djodjic, that is, who as well as leading courses on water conservation and hydrology at SLU, is working on a number of other projects, including one on nitrogen losses.
Direct and indirect benefits
If the Board of Agriculture and farmers will be able to make direct use of Faruk Djodjic's research, the National Board of Health and Welfare is benefiting more indirectly from the experience and knowledge of another Mistra researcher: Ing-Marie Olsson, a veterinary surgeon who gained a doctorate for her work on cadmium in humans and animals. She was contacted even before she presented her thesis, and was later appointed on a project basis in the Board´s Environmental Health Unit to work with the environmental objectives adopted by the Swedish Parliament.
‘Mistra’s interdisciplinary approach stands me in good stead in my work here. To a large extent, I need to cooperate and communicate with people with different backgrounds and different ways of expressing themselves.´
Olsson's experience from Mistra comes in handy, for example, in the Environmental Objectives Council's Progress Review Group, which includes people from government agencies, local authorities, county administrative boards, NGOs and the business sector. Implementing the national environmental objectives involves a partly new way of working, which she says the authorities are not quite used to yet. She finds it exciting to be part of the process, which of course needs to be allowed to take time.
But Ing-Marie Olsson was also recruited for her doctoral research on cadmium in the food supply chain from plough to plate. It involved measuring levels of the metal in crops and animal feed and in blood and urine samples from pigs and people on different farms, all with the aim of finding indicators. The holistic approach of her work fits in well with the Board of Health and Welfare´s task of developing health indicators.
Cadmium-free raw materials
Another end-user of Mistra´s research is the food industry, which has several representatives in FOOD 21’s reference group. They include people from the ICA supermarket group, the Swedish Dairy Association, and Cerealia (a manufacturer of grain-based products), which Ingmar Börjesson represents.
‘Our interest in the entire chain from farmland to food product is a natural one. For one thing, there´s the cadmium problem that we need to keep an eye on. Though it's a difficult one to tackle, as cadmium occurs naturally in the soil and there are additional inputs from atmospheric deposition.´
Börjesson sees the reference group, which meets a couple of times a year, as a forum that provides a common platform for decision making, based on a discussion and interpretation of research results. It improves the chances of those results being put to practical use.
‘I particularly remember a session where we discussed a study of consumer values and how the results were to be interpreted. The study showed, for example, that although more organic products are being sold, the number of customers has not increased. Very interesting!´
In Ingmar Börjesson’s view, the purpose of Cerealia's involvement with Mistra is to identify resources and areas that can help make Sweden more competitive internationally. The research being done is generating a great deal of knowledge that will translate into consumer benefits of various kinds. For example, in the area of animal welfare.
‘While this is not an immediate issue for my company, Sweden is obviously in the forefront when it comes to animal ethics. This is an area with great potential, although we know that consumer awareness can take a long time to feed through into action,´ says Börjesson, who would like to see corresponding work being done with regard to crop production.
The need for a larger number of interdisciplinary meeting places, where knowledge and responsibility can be shared, is central to Mistra’s thinking. And discussions are already under way on a possible continuation after FOOD 21 reaches the end of its funding period at the end of 2004.
