The Cost of Reducing Ammonia from Agriculture: Farm-gate Estimates and Policy Considerations

Ammonia has been identified as one of the major air pollutants threatening human health and the natural environment, with agriculture being the dominant source of ammonia (NH3) emissions. To comply with international agreements and national targets to improve air quality, Northern Ireland (NI) needs to reduce ammonia emissions. Therefore, changes in management and investment in technology to improve the environmental sustainability of the food system will be necessary. More importantly, there is a need to reduce emissions in an economically efficient manner and prioritise measures that are cost-effective to adopt. This article employs the Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC) approach to provide insights into decision-making on the most cost-effective strategy for reducing ammonia emissions in NI. This article presents five low-cost measures for livestock production systems: diets, housing, manure storage, application of manure to the land, and the use of urease inhibitors with urea-based fertilisers. Results of a Marginal Abatement Cost Curve analysis indicate that the adoption of all five measures gives an overall reduction of 6.5 kilotonnes (21 per cent) of ammonia, at a total cost of £6.6 million per annum compared to business-as-usual ammonia emissions and holding livestock numbers constant.