Worldwide Nitrogen Management

Whenever I find a major article in the popular press on agriculture, I like to comment on it.  This article on nitrogen in the National Geographic is actually fairly well done.  It discusses the need for nitrogen fertilizers in order to grow food in the amounts needed to sustain our population.  It also discusses the excessive use of nitrogen fertilizers in some places.  One of the suggested methods to control nitrogen escaping from crop production is to grow food organically.  Organic growers maintain that they can grow high yielding corn organically, but they are either using lots of manure, or they are using legumes to produce the nitrogen.  First off, there is not enough manure to provide all the nitrogen.  The second problem is that some manure is not properly balanced in nutrients.  If you put enough hog manure on the crop for all of your nitrogen, you end up with too much phosphorous.  That is also an environmental concern.  The legumes are less likely to create an imbalance, but adding a year of clover to a rotation will reduce productivity as well.

One of the reasons I write so often about nitrogen management is that I think we need to manage it better through testing, timely applications, and variable rate technology.  Good nitrogen management is important both economically and environmentally.