LandPaKT

Abstract

LandPaKT (agricultural techniques: potentials and costs of greenhouse gas mitigation) is a joint project of the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering (ATB) and the Agricultural-Horticultural Faculty of the Humboldt University Berlin. Within the established graduate school LandPaKT, seven PhD students analyse the mitigation potentials and costs of greenhouse gas emissions systematically and merge them at the farm level. With the re-wetting of organic soils, the carbon sequestration in mineral soils depending on agricultural activities and the livestock husbandry, the most important sectors of agriculture are included in the analyses. With modelling and simulation approaches, single as well as combined measures are analysed with regard to their overall effect. Recommendations for the most-promising measures at farm level are deduced. Based on a farm model for water-use efficiency, developed within another ATB project (AgroHyd), LandPaKT aims to expand the model by greenhouse gas emissions. The graduate school started in May 2013.

The increase of the global human population with the resulting increase in food demand accompanied by changed consumption patterns urgently calls for the exploitation of mitigation options in animal husbandry. Based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, methodological recommendations for carbon footprint analyses for dairy farming will be developed. Furthermore, the influence of different feeds and feeding strategies on greenhouse gas emission from dairy farming will be investigated.