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Statistics on Scottish Nitrogen Balance Sheet published today.

The Scottish Nitrogen Balance Sheet (SNBS) 2022 presents the Nitrogen Use Efficiencies (NUEs) which are the headline measures of the SNBS and show the percentage of useful nitrogen outputs, for example food, relative to total nitrogen inputs.  

In 2022, the whole economy NUE figure was 27%. Although the whole economy figure is dominated by food production, this figure is lower than the NUE for food production due to the inclusion of sources such as transport which produce no useful nitrogen outputs. The NUE for all food production is 33%, with the figure for agriculture ( 33%) being very similar, given that agriculture dominates food production. The 33% figure for all of agriculture comprises values for arable agriculture ( 70%) and livestock based agriculture ( 10%).

The largest component of nitrogen use in Scotland is associated with food production. Overall, out of the 66.9 kt N / yr of total useful nitrogen-containing outputs produced in Scotland, almost 89.5% of these are associated with food production (namely 53.6 kt N / yr of foodstuffs from agriculture, with the remainder from aquaculture and landings from sea fisheries).

Background

The full statistical publication is available at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-nitrogen-balance-sheet-2022/

The units kt N / yr refers to thousands of tonnes of nitrogen consumed or produced per year.

Livestock based agriculture is inherently less nitrogen efficient than arable agriculture because only a small proportion of the ingested nitrogen by livestock ends up in useful nitrogen-containing produce.

This is the fourth time these data have been compiled.

Official statistics are produced by professionally independent statistical staff – more information on the standards of official statistics in Scotland can be accessed at: https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/About