Or farmers can reduce the overall amount of nitrogen required by employing new biotechnologies, such as the nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) improvements offered by Arcadia Biosciences. By engineering crops to overexpress a gene that allows roots to absorb more nitrogen, Arcadia scientists have shown that "it's possible for NUE crops to produce the same yield with half as much fertilizer," president and CEO, Eric Rey, says. "In canola, we saw a two-thirds reduction."
Seeds bearing the technology have already been licensed to agricultural giants Monsanto Company and Dupont's Pioneer Hi-Bred International in the case of canola and corn, respectively—and even grass seed from Scotts Miracle-Gro Company may one day employ it. Although field trials over the last four years have proved the genetic changes effectiveness, further testing and government approval means that such crops will not be grown before 2012.
"It's a big economic benefit for farmers if they use only half as much nitrogen as well a big beneficial impact on nitrogen runoff into waterways," says Rey, who hopes that this product will be adopted as quickly as herbicide-resistant crops, which only took five years from introduction in 1998 to become nearly 70 percent of the corn grown in the U.S., and is now nearly 90 percent. "A reasonable expectation is that there would be a dramatic reduction, maybe by 2018."
But that still might not solve the dead zone problem. So much nitrogen is now reaching these coastal waters that much of it ends up buried in sediment, Diaz says, even when new nitrogen sources are removed those sediments release that nitrogen over time, perpetuating the cycle.
That inability to recover is driven not only by the nitrogen buried in the sediment but also by water layers that don't mix with one another, despite the massive flow of rivers like the Mississippi. Instead, warmer, fresher water on the surface sits on top of cooler, denser, saltier water and it takes the energy of multiple powerful hurricanes to blend the two.
For example, as Hurricane Katrina bore down on the Louisiana coast with its powerful winds blowing faster than 130 miles (210 kilometers) per hour, the monstrous tropical storm delivered a benefit: it mixed the warm, oxygen-rich surface waters with the colder, almost oxygen-free waters beneath, dispelling the largest dead zone in the U.S. for a time. Hurricane Rita followed and finished the work, ending early the seasonal dead zone that forms each year at the mouth of the Mississippi.
That dead zone—which last year stretched over roughly 8,500 square miles (22,000 square kilometers), an area the size of New Jersey, and is predicted to grow even more extensive in 2008, thanks to the early summer floods—forms because of the rich load of nitrogen and phosphorus the Mississippi carries down from the farm fields of the U.S. Midwest.
Hoping for hurricanes is neither popular nor sensible, so scientists in the Baltic Sea nations, desperate for solutions, are considering so-called geoengineering options: large-scale human interventions into natural systems. In this case, air would be bubbled into some of the smaller bays to assess what happens. "If you look at agricultural ponds, you can aerate them to prevent low oxygen," Diaz says. "But that's a pond. We're talking about open systems with tides. The water doesn't just stay there."
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Add CommentCover cropping is a much more accessible, sustainable and effective method of reducing or eliminating the need for the application of nitrogen fertilizer. Of course, Monsanto and Dupont would Like you to purchase their expensive GM seed, they would Like you to think that they have the answer to a problem they are very much a part of...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am surprised that the SA is no more aware of the good solutions that sustainable agriculture (which is not just about sustainable agriculture, but also sustainable environment and society) have to offer - tried and tested - to this problem...
Wow, pretty sad isnt it? Yet all the bottom feeder politicians will tell the Sheeple that everything is just hunky dory!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJT
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Doesn't it make you wonder... today we have so much water run-off full of excess Nitrogen (which forms problematic algal blooms where not desired). At the same time we have industries setting themselves up ready to intentionally grow algae to harvest bio-diesel or whatever and 're-capture' carbon for fuel and stuff. Do the people with the Nitro/Algae problem talk to the people with the Nitro/Algae solution? Is there some way we can make these people talk to each other?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to see more exploration of bubbling air into the dead zones (in addition to, rather than as a substitute for, curtailing fertilizer and other chemical runoffs). Yes, the dead zones are in tidal waters, but the tides do not so mix up the waters as to revive the dead zones, so the tides are unlikely too much to disperse the aeration.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood for making <a href="http://www.asiawriters.com">freelance writing opportunities</a>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA scientist is quoted as saying: "Nitrogen is very slippery; it's very difficult to keep it on land," Diaz notes. "We need to find a technology to keep nitrogen from leaving the soil." If only Agribusiness and those who teach modern Petrochemical based production could understand that we don't need a new "technology" - what we need is to restore soils using organic and permaculture methods and stop using synthetic fertilizers that destroy soil structure and soil ecology. Healthy organic soils (unlike fertilizer) hold nitrogen in the organic material and it is released slowly by bacterial and enzymes
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisaction.
The problem is that restoring soils around the world will take decades and the food that must be produced to feed billions will not come from wishful thinking or dreams of "new technology" which usually is code for GM plants or algae. But there is no quick fix and great dangers that we would further contaminate our ecosystem and food chain with toxic and destructive consequences.
I propose an alternative approach to our food supply, which is to equip people to intensively and easily produce natural, organic food in the back yard or within our homes and communities with integrated SolaRoof greenhouse methods. Large scale Controlled Environment greenhouse growing of food, feed and fuel crops (including integrated algae) is now feasible with the SolaRoof breakthrough.
permaculture is a good idea
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the long run reducing nitrogen fertalizer use might be the way to go, but today the problems lie with excess nitrogen in the water running into the oceans and bays. We need to deal with the problem where it is. Reducing nitrogen in any body of water is not an insoluble problem. The nitrogen can be handled before it gets into the bays and the oceans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAsk anybody who has ever had a home aquarium. You can set up biofiltration systems that put the nitrogen back into the air, where it comes from in the first place when fertalizers are manufactured. When I had an aquarium, my tap water always had nitrogen in it but the run off from my aquarium was always nitrogen free after I had added plenty of nitrogen in the fish food because I had set up an efficient nitrogen biofiltration system. Biofiltration systems can be set up in holding ponds or lakes or rivers. If you bubble off the nitrogen before it gets to bays or the oceans, the dead zones from nitrogen run off get reduced or eliminated without ruining farmers or crippling our food production systems.