Posted by fixerupper on July 12, 2018 at 17:23:34 from (108.161.63.136):
In Reply to: Honesty in farming! posted by oldtanker on July 12, 2018 at 16:23:27:
Nitrates come from naturally decaying matter in the soil such as decaying roots. Nitrates come from nitrogen fixing legumes like soybeans and alfalfa. Nitrates also come from manure whether it be from wildlife or farms. Nitrates come from man made fertilizers injected into the soil or applied on top. Nitrates come from sewers and heavily fertilized grass in cities and towns.
The big debate is how much nitrate comes from each source. The Des Moines water works lawsuit affected my county Along with two other counties so I have naturally paid attention to this debacle.
There are other stories besides mine but what happened was we had a few dry years and nitrates in the soil were not flushed out like normal so there was a buildup. Then we had a couple of wet years that flushed the extra nitrates out. The Raccoon river which is the Des Moines water supply had a high nitrate content from the nitrate buildup in the soil being flushed out. The ageing Des Moines water works treatment plant nitrate removal process was overloaded. The Des Moines water works sent out tree huggers to sample water coming out of tile lines that feed tributaries to the Raccoon river. These three counties happened to receive the most rainfall so these three counties were sued with the intent of a new water treatment plant being built with the monetary proceeds from the lawsuit. In the end he waterworks lost and a bunch of lawyers made a bundle.
He tree huggers blame an increase in corn acres on putting more nitrates in the groundwater because of the fact that nitrogen is heavily applied to corn acres. (Evil ethanol comes into play here) An increase in corn acres in these three counties that were sued means more corn on corn was grown or in layman’s terms, more corn grown on land that grew corn the previous year. What they don’t realize is after the corn crop is grown and harvested there is very little nitrogen left in the soil in that field. The corn used it up and nitrogen fertilizer is expensive so the sensible farmer isn’t going to apply more nitrogen than the corn crop needs. A bean crop in turn Makes nitrogen and fixes it in the soil, about a pound of nitrogen for every bushel of soybeans produced so soybeans are more of a culprit than corn so in reality a corn-bean rotation puts more nitrogen in the soil during a time of the year when that nitrogen is not used up. I can go on and on about responsible nitrogen application practices that reduce nitrogen loss but that’s not the original subject matter.
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