Dear Ronald and all,
Thank you for the quick feedback to my original comments. Please review the text below as a matter of response to your question: do you have any other suggestions? In reference to my comment of including the supply side of fertilizer industry in the CoCoFe.
Although I do appreciate the intent of the CoCoFe consultation facilitators to focus only on the use of fertilizer, I want to politely re-emphasize on the need to include the supply and demand side of the fertilizer industry, while supporting the point of view from other panelists who have also seen the need to make CoCoFe holistic by including the supply side of the industry.
To focus only on the use of fertilizer to minimize the negative externalities related to the environment and human health, is to ignore the negative externalities on the environment and human health of the supply side of the fertilizer industry and give a “clean bill of health” to the production and manufacturing processes while placing all potential regulatory burden that would emanate from CoCoFe, on the use of fertilizer. I do understand and can also appreciate the implications with the industry by addressing those issues in CoCoFe and I can also appreciate the ease of addressing such issues from the user perspective only; but the fact is, that there is a lot the industry can still do to help reduce and therefore minimize such externalities through improvements in the production and manufacturing processes. We know that many of the negative environmental and health hazards from the use of fertilizer have their roots in fertilizer production and manufacturing processes. Focusing on the use (demand) of fertilizer will help reduce such externalities, but having a holistic approach (which entails considering also the supply side of fertilizer), will definitely minimize them.
Therefore if we are to keep as part of the CoCoFe objectives, “to minimize environmental and health impacts from pollutants such as heavy metals in fertilizers”, we need to start at and focus also on the supply side of the industry for an effective minimization of environmental contamination and human health hazards by improving the production and manufacturing processes to reduce or eliminate contaminants (i.e., heavy metals) in fertilizers and perhaps by investing in developing more efficient fertilizer (a new generation of “smart” fertilizer products congruent with crop genetics technological advances); complemented with a more efficient use of fertilizer.
However, if the facilitators of this consultation insist on the CoCoFe focusing only on the use or demand side of fertilizer, I suggest to eliminate the rhetoric of “minimizing environmental contamination and health hazard from the use of fertilizer”, and keep this as an implicit, not explicit objective. Having said that, I suggest to consider the following objectives:
1. Increase food production to supply the increasing needs of more and safer food;
2. Maximize the efficient use of nutrients fertilizer to enhance sustainable agriculture production;
3. Minimize nutrients losses to the environment (GHG, runoff and leaching into surface water streams and underground waters) to reduce contamination and human health hazard.
Less and more clear objectives, will help simplify the elaboration the CoCoFe and perhaps facilitate its vulgarization.
I believe the rest of the points raised in my original comment, still applies.
Thanks.
Porfirio Fuentes