Nitrogen and phosphorous balances for 162 crops and 187 regions in 2010-2022

Biodiversity is declining at a rate unprecedented in human history and the cultivation of agricultural products is a major driver for biodiversity loss. Furthermore, in today’s globalized world, consumption and production of harmful products are often spatially segregated. Quantifying the supply chain impacts of agriculture on biodiversity is therefore critical for guiding international policy and consumers in reducing harmful practices. While past studies often used pressure factors on biodiversity as proxies for quantifying biodiversity damage, recent years have seen increasing efforts to quantify the impacts of agricultural activities on biodiversity by modelling pressure to impact relationships. However, due to limited data availability, many existing studies have been restricted to modelling impacts based on only a single pressure factor, typically land use. While this is a useful first approximation when faced with lacking data, it obscures biodiversity impacts that arise from other pressures, such as nutrient pollution.  To address this gap, the work presented here provides data on nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) use and pollution for 162 crops in 187 regions for the period 2010-2022. To estimate emissions to the ground and to the air, we developed nutrient balances by combining and gap-filling previous global datasets on crop production, fertilizer application, soils and climate zones. Gaseous emissions were estimated according to IPCC Tier 1 methodology. The resulting dataset includes synthetic fertilizer and manure inputs, nutrient uptake and atmospheric deposition for both N and P. Additionally, for N, biological fixation and gaseous emissions in the forms N₂O, NH₃ and N₂ as well as leaching and runoff are estimated. Emissions to the ground are estimated by subtracting nutrient outputs (except for leaching and runoff) from nutrient inputs. These may be used in concordance with the impact assessment indicators which have been developed within the Horizon Europe project BAMBOO, based on GLOBIO, GLAM and LC-Impact. Furthermore, all of the measures developed here can be used as environmental extensions for the agricultural input-output model FABIO, enabling the tracing of nutrient pollution and its impacts through global value chains at an unprecedented level of detail.