Page 161 - Ecuador's Banana Sector under Climate Change

chapter 6: climate change policies and their potential impact on ecuador’s banana sector - an economic analysis
“[W]e see the greatest gains in NUE [nitrogen use efficiency] and environmental protection accruing from ‘precision management’ in time and space of all production factors to maximize the synchrony between crop-N demand and the supply of mineral N from soil reserves and N inputs ... Such precision- management approaches will be required for both large-scale agriculture in developed countries and small-scale farming in developing countries. Balancing N demand and supply will require breakthroughs in fundamental understanding of crop and soil ecology and organic geochemistry to allow development of dynamic and cost-effective N-management approaches.”
If the estimates of the nitrogen uptake rates for bananas (under local conditions) and the determinants (e.g. moisture, temperature) are correct, the benefits of closer synchronized nitrogen applications can be balanced against the cost of the additional applications. In addition, the optimal economic application profile can
be determined. The banana sector in Ecuador lacks the necessary research and incentives to manage fertilizer use in order to minimize surplus soil nitrogen. It is important, therefore, to disseminate more information in this context. This would provide the benefits of reducing the unfavourable externalities of nitrogenous fertilizers (N2O emissions and leaching) and of increasing the efficiency of fertilizer in the growing of bananas. Best practices in managing fertilizer (including the objective of GHG emissions mitigation) should be developed for specific regions in terms of the relative soil and climate and the information should be disseminated. Furthermore, the testing for nitrogen content in soil and plant tissue would provide data for the appropriate applications of nitrogen fertilizer. Civil engagement and perhaps the full or partial provision of such testing may be warranted.
5.4 Organic versus conventional bananas
Policies that encourage organic growing in lieu of the conventional growing of bananas often are advocated as a means to reduce GHG emissions. As indicated in Table 53, a shift from conventional to organic growing could result in a 20 percent average drop in terms of on-farm emissions. It is important to examine, in greater detail, the difference between conventional and organic production in relation to the GHG emissions (Table 54).63 The total difference in the emissions is 62.6 kg/t. The emission-contributing factors are ranked by the amount of GHG emission change.
The most significant reduction in emissions relates directly to those from N2O and fertilizers; together, they account for -93.7 kg/t of GHG emissions. The balance (-4.5 kg/t) is a result of more efforts to recycle, less electricity used, less packaging and the elimination of two classes of insecticide: Bifentrine
and Chlorpyrifos. It is important to note that while insecticides pose a major environmental and human health risk, they have very little impact on the carbon footprint of the banana.64 Organic methods of growing emanate slightly greater
63 Table 54 provides more detail in relation to the summary data in Table 53. Table 54 examines those factors that have changed and excludes the source of the emissions, which are the same for organic and conventional methods.
64 Chapter 1 addresses the importance of sustainability relating to the production of bananas.
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