Farm-scale practical strategies to increase nitrogen use efficiency and reduce nitrogen footprint in crop production across the North China Plain

Achieving a pathway for green development is a critically important challenge for agriculture in China and beyond. The current study evaluates the effects of a range of management interventions including planting, fertilizer nitrogen (N) rate optimization and increasing farm size to promote agricultural green development across the North China Plain (NCP) based on large-scale farm surveys. Our results showed that the mean annual N fertilizer rate for wheat-soybean rotation was much lower than that of wheat-maize and wheat-peanut. Interestingly, our study indicated strong pre-crop effects of summer soybean (Glycine max (Linn.) Merr.) on the following winter wheat (Triticum aestivum Linn.) in N saving compared to summer maize (Zea mays Linn.) and summer peanuts (Arachis hypogaea Linn.), the low N rate for summer soybean and its ‘legume’ carryover effects led to the low N rate, N surplus and N footprint, and high N use efficiency (NUE) in wheat-soybean. The survey results showed that the optimal N rates for achieving maximum yield of summer maize, summer peanuts and winter wheat were 229, 249 and 236–260 kg ha−1 across the NCP, respectively. Moreover, better N management is beneficial for reducing the N surplus and leads to higher NUE and lower N footprint. Generally, large farms applied less N fertilizer than small farms, thus leading to a lower N surplus and higher N partial factor productivity with the same yield level. Here we show for the first time that the combinations of crop rotation design, optimizing N rate application and increasing farm size are very efficient in reducing N fertilizer applications and the N footprint with stable crop yields. N management should play a more important role in agricultural green development across the NCP and similar regions around the world. •The mean annual N rate, N surplus and N footprint of wheat-soybean was lowest among the three major crop rotations.•Pre-crop effects of soybean on winter wheat increased PFP and reduced N footprint without affecting wheat yield.•The optimal N rate for the maximum crop yield of maize, peanut, wheat were 229, 249, 236–260 kg N ha−1, respectively.•The NUE was higher and N footprint was lower in large farms compared with small farms.