Washington-The industry believes a recent report in the journal Science condemning the increase in fertilizer use for large-scale environmental impacts isn’t telling the whole story. Professor Donald Canfield from the University of Southern Denmark, the lead author of the study, claimed in the Oct. 7 article that an increase of 800 percent from 1960 to 2000 in fertilizer use worldwide contributed to large-scale environmental impacts such as “dead zones” in seas and oceans, and greenhouse gas emissions of nitrous oxide from nutrient-overloaded wetlands. According to Canfield, naturally occurring microorganisms will be able to clean up the excess nitrogen that humans have created, but it will take many decades. The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) responded that Canfield’s report only looks at one side of the story fertilizer use without any regard for the tremendous yield increases that have been achieved in recent decades. “The amount of fertilizer applied per bushel of corn produced continues to decline,” TFI spokeswoman Kathy Mathers pointed out. “Fertilizer use efficiency is at an all-time high, with U.S. farmers applying 38 percent less nitrogen, 52 percent less phosphate, and 54 percent less potash fertilizer per bushel of corn produced than in 1980.” Canfield’s report advocates “several new approaches and a much wider use of more sustainable time-honored practices” to decrease nitrogen use in agriculture. Canfield reported better crop rotation; better timing of applications to limit the total amounts of fertilizer applied; the development of genetically-engineered fertilizer-hoarding crops; the improvement of wheat, barley, and rye through current breeding; and furnishing cereals and other crops with microbes that supply nitrogen. “Humans may have produced the largest impact on the nitrogen cycle since the major pathways of the modern cycle originated some 2 billion years ago,” the report declared.
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