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Recently applied technology could help farmers systematically identify parts of their low-yielding cropland and significantly reduce the unnecessary use of fertilizer, new study find.
Researchers at Michigan State University have discovered that, thanks to remote sensing, corn and soybean fertilizer producers could save about $ 500 million in fertilizer and prevent 6.8 million tonnes of oil. 39 carbon dioxide equivalent of escaping from an unused nitrogen fertilizer. l & # 39; atmosphere. It's about the same as the emissions generated by 1.5 million cars in a year.
This is particularly important in areas like the US Midwest, where the existence of a large and lucrative corn belt means that fertilizers are widely used to stimulate crop growth. But as farmers can not predict where crops will be successful or not, fertilizers are uniformly applied throughout the country. Thus, in low yield areas, a certain amount of fertilizer will always be left in the soil instead of being absorbed by crops. This is reflected in the waterways and eventually reaches the Gulf of Mexico, where the nutrient – rich substance feeds the growth of algae that creates more and more dead zones in the ocean.
To try to solve this problem at the source, the researchers looked for a way to align fertilizer application on the corn belt with the productivity of US crops. They analyzed satellite data covering 30 million hectares of corn and soybean fields in the Midwestern states for eight years. This gave them a detailed view of the region's corn production and helped them locate portions of cropland that have had low yields over the years.
Combined with available data on the amount of fertilizer applied throughout the territory and taking into account the amount of fertilizer used by crops, researchers could estimate the amount of nitrogen – l & rsquo; One of the main nutrients / pollutants contained in fertilizers – remained unused in the soil. soil on low yielding plots.
Their analysis revealed that about 50% of the cultivated land produced a high yield. But the remaining half consisted of low yielding fields (26%) or plots producing a mix of lower and higher yields (28%). Thus, with a quarter of the farmland confirmed as consistently unproductive, researchers were able to calculate that only half the nitrogen in the fertilizer that had been applied was actually absorbed by the plants. In other words, the remaining 50% was wasted in the soil, costing farmers millions of dollars, expelling greenhouse gases, and eventually drifting into streams.
The researchers found that, in another way, the low yielding corn crop accounted for 44% of the nitrogen pollution in the study area.
According to researchers, the application of fertilizer more intentionally in order to match the yields in the corn belt could significantly reduce the pollution that ultimately reaches the Gulf. But one The major advantage of their approach is that it relies on long-term satellite data that is now ubiquitous. It could also be used as a tool in other parts of the world to identify low yielding cropland over time and rationalize fertilizer use in these areas. areas too.
It is also worth noting the many other resources that go to agriculture – from phosphorus to insecticides and herbicides to expensive labor. If calculated together, the cost of resources wasted on low yielding land could actually reveal that these areas are not profitable to exploit. This would depend on further research to calculate overall costs. But if this is indeed the case, the researchers suggest that it might ultimately be better to turn these plots into wild habitat strips – to encourage pollinators, for example.
For now, this satellite-based approach could help farmers in one of the world's most demanding agricultural regions make at least more informed decisions about where and how much fertilizer to apply. "No one wins when fertilizers are wasted in areas that will not produce," the researchers said. to write. "Once farmers have identified these areas, they can both save money and help the environment."
Source: Basso and. Al. "Performance stability analysis reveals large-scale sources of nitrogen loss in the US Midwest. " Scientific reports. 2019.
Image: © stevanovicigor / Envato Elements
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