Referring to nitrogen emissions from agriculture, the latest study date to the year 2006 (“Entwicklung der landwirtschaftlichen Emissionen umweltrelevanter Stickstoffverbindungen“, Schriftenreihe Nr. 2006/1, Gruppe Agrar-, Lebensmittel und Umweltökonomie, ETH Zürich).
Since then, however, changes occur in framework conditions the study above based on. Moreover, the Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG) and the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) jointly prepared environmental objectives for agriculture. Thus, gaps are pointed out between the current situation and these objectives.
Based on this, concerns arise about (1) how will the current situation develop, (2) which legal regulations are reasonable and (3) which intermediate objectives might be defined until the year 2020 to reach environmental objectives in the long-term?