Chris - 7/2/2018 20:29 http://www.timesrepublican.com/news/todays-news/2018/07/study-iowa-nitrogen-pollution-in-the-water-is-getting-worse/ "DES MOINES — Nitrogen pollution flowing out of Iowa to the Gulf of Mexico has grown by close to 50 percent over nearly two decades, a new report shows, despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent to stem nutrients entering the state’s waterways."
which leads to:
“We’re not headed in the right direction. … We need to follow the lead of other states and pass some environmental laws that will actually reduce loads and result in cleaner water,” Terry said. As yields have gone up dramatically over the past 2 decades, so has the amount of N applied to get those yields. Here is a graph of US corn yields from Purdue. It is not rocket science that applied nitrogen fertilizer use has also increased approximately proportional to those yield increases. It's math, not politics, to see that even if the PERCENT of N runoff per ton applied is decreased (by filter strips, incorporation, split/timely application, etc), the actual AMOUNT of runoff likely still increases. If there is an increase in severe rainfall events, that factors into losses also. It's math and national, not just Iowa. Iowa just happens to grow more N-using corn than other states which drain into the Gulf.
Edited by Jim 7/3/2018 08:37
 (CornYieldTrend_US (full).png)
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 CornYieldTrend_US (full).png (74KB - 29 downloads)
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Iowa, we so bad.
