Governing Nutrient Pollution Beyond Farmers

This talk will introduce the “Governing Nutrient Pollution Beyond Farmers” project. The project is driven by the following question: is it possible to reduce agricultural nutrient pollution without regulating farmers? This requires a new governance system that goes beyond traditional approaches, focused on agri-food chain actors other than the farmer, from fertilizer producers to multinational retailers. In short, this project plans to develop a series of public and private regulatory strategies targeting non-farm actors that can impact farm-level nutrient management, as well as an evaluation framework to analyze the ex-ante environmental and socioeconomic impacts.

This presentation will outline the outcomes of the inaugural “Governing Nutrient Pollution Beyond Farmers” (GNPBF) workshop, scheduled to take place in March 2020. The aim of the workshop and the broader GNPBF project is to design and evaluate new policy approaches to reduce agricultural nutrient pollution without directly regulating farmers.