| How Big Ag Pollutes America’s Waters and Makes Money Doing It It’s been 33 years since an Iowa State University agronomist named Fred Blackmer thought he’d struck gold for Midwestern corn farmers. Using a fairly simple three-step method, Blackmer developed an analytical tool that could accurately tell farmers exactly how much fertilizer their fields needed to produce abundant harvests each season. The analytics Blackmer perfected showed not only how much fertilizer the corn crops would need to meet production targets, but also exposed how much could be wasted. Blackmer ultimately determined that farmers were applying a staggering 500 million excess pounds of nitrogen each year, a practice that not only wasted farmers’ money but also wreaked havoc on the environment as the nitrogen not taken up by plants drained from farm fields to contaminate rivers, lakes, and streams. Despite what Blacker saw as obvious benefits to producers, not to mention the environment, his method failed to gain significant traction in farm country. Farmer allegiance to the excessive fertilizing practices pushed by the so-called “Big Ag” production industry and aligned academic institutions left Blackmer’s common sense approach on a shelf gathering dust.
State and federal data now show that since 1990, nitrogen spread on fields in Iowa and nine other major US corn-growing states has increased 26%, with more nitrogen than ever pouring off the land and into US waters. | 