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Lapel, In | and after, a field trip to the Rulon farm. Interesting day. We should expect this administration will be pushing hard to get every farmer to comply via cap and trade. The idea is to capture nitrogen that could enter the Nation's watersheds and wind up causing even more hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico.
As this would do nothing to clean up the problem,it seems to me to be attacking the wrong end of the problem.Why would we not be better off to try to recycle the N in the Gulf ,rather than to simple possibly alleviate the continuing source of the cause. Why not try to make it a system rather than an approach that may or may not solve the problem First of all , agriculture is only a part of the problem. Parts of it is caused by industry, the lawn care business and a part of it is a natural event. There could well be enough N in the Gulf to supply our needs for 100 years. All we need to do is find a way to recapture it. Can't afford it ? How do we know if we don't try? What were you paying for N this spring?
While I don't think a concerted effort to get farmers to comply simply for the benefit to the hypoxia problem, I see great benefit to our soils with the use of cover crops. The cover crop priciple was long ago established by nature and is the reason our precious prairie topsoils run so deep.
Edited by msb 8/25/2009 21:06
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CTIC cover crop workshop today.
