The aim of RePhoKUs is to enhance the resilience and sustainability of the UK food system by developing and prioritising adaptive strategies that reduce the vulnerability of UK farming to future P scarcity at multiple scales, and that enhance the balanced delivery of multiple ecosystem systems for future food and water security
Details
The project combines different biophysical, social and economic approaches to examine the synergies and conflicts arising from how P is currently distributed within the food system to stimulate discussion and provide evidence for potential policy approaches.
The project involves an extensive stakeholder engagement process at farm, catchment and national scale. In addition to the P SFA for NI, key outputs from the project will include (1) a national strategy to reduce the vulnerability of the food system to shocks and stress due to P availability or price fluctuations. (2) P SFA of the UK food system and the regional imbalance between P demand and supply, (3) assessment of catchments for their vulnerability to P loss to water and options for more sustainable P management (4) economic optimisation model highlighting the impact of sustainable P management on farm profitability.
The project is a collaboration between Lancaster University, AFBI, Leeds University, University of Technology Sydney, and Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and is funded by the Global Food Security’s ‘Resilience of the UK Food System Programme’ with the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Scottish Government.
More information at: http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/rephokus/
The purpose of this report is to present the results from the Phosphorus (P) Substance Flow Analysis (SFA), and stakeholder engagement process carried out in Northern Ireland as part of the Rephokus project
RePhoKUs report October 2020