Multi-assessment of alternative fertilisers for promoting local sustainable value chains and clean ecosystems

Fertilisation is key to feeding the growing world population, yet the most common fertilisation scheme based on conventional fertilisers poses threats to the environment (e.g. eutrophication caused by nutrient leaching) and sustainability of the EU food system (due to high dependence on fertiliser imports from third countries).

Thus, among the key EU political priorities is to reduce by 20% the use of conventional fertilisers by 2030 and to decrease nutrient losses by 50%.

A promising solution for this aim are alternative fertilisers produced from recovered nutrients from secondary raw materials (e.g. bio-waste, sewage sludge).

However, their wide scale deployment is hindered by lack of awareness about alternative fertilisation, concerns regarding their technical viability and the disparity of legislations that creates a state of uncertainty.In this context, FER-PLAY is a comprehensive approach to gather, harmonise, select and complement the knowledge on alternative fertiliser value chains and diffuse it to promote the wide-scale production and application of alternative fertilisers with best environmental, social and economic performance as well as technical and regulatory viability.

Thus, FER-PLAY employs a unique methodology for mapping the value chains, select the most promising ones and assess their impacts. FER-PLAY engages key stakeholders in co-creation of results and broadly disseminates them.

The consortium gathers key players from the whole value chain: (1) alternative fertiliser producers from all the main types of secondary raw materials (producers of digestate- 183 members, of compost- 120 members and of struvite), (2) entities representing conventional (1.5M members), organic (100,000 members) and young (200,000 members) farmers, (3) a Pan-European network with +100 members representing public administrations, supported by (4) waste valorisation and agriculture research institutes, (5) market strategists and (6) communication experts.