Phosphorus flows in the Portuguese agriculture and livestock sectors

Phosphorus plays a vital role as a limiting nutrient for plant growth, but the majority of minable phosphate rock reserves are located in just a small handful of countries: South Africa, Jordan and Morocco. Therefore, Portugal is totally dependent on imports, with phosphate rock being added to the European Union list of critical raw materials it is essential to increase its sustainable use. Thus, the main objective of this work was to compute substance flow analysis of phosphorus in the agriculture and livestock production sectors in Portugal. The data was gathered from several statistical sources and computed into phosphorus contents employing mass conservation law. Phosphorus flows were computed and quantified using STAN software. As result, we identified phosphorus flows, losses, and sinks. We can conclude that, both in agriculture and livestock production sectors, it is possible to decrease losses and increase phosphorus efficiency use by applying best management practices.This work has been funded by project 0340-SYMBIOSIS-3-E co-funded by FEDER ''Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional" through Interreg V-A España-PortugaI (POCTEP) 20142020. C. Dias-Ferreira and V. Oliveira have been funded through FCT "Fundação para a Ciência e para a Tecnologia" by POCH — Programa Operacional Capital Humano within ESF — European Social Fund and by national funds from MCTES (SFRH/BPD/100717/2014; SFRH/BD/115312/2016).