The Environmental Defense Fund has taken aim at agriculture to eliminate fertilizer pollution as an environmental concern. The EDF says The effort will “engage farmers and businesses throughout the supply chain to transform the way fertilizer-dependent grain crops are grown and sourced.” Suzy Friedman, director of EDF’s Sustainable Sourcing Initiative, says “Our long-term goal is to make the entire U.S. grain supply sustainable – good for farmers, good for the climate and good for our waterways.” The near-term goal of EDF’s Sustainable Sourcing Initiative is to maximize fertilizer efficiency on half of U.S. corn crops by 2020, which the group claims will cut 25 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions and improve water quality.
Further, the EDF called fertilizer the engine of agriculture, but says its inefficient use is one of the biggest threats to a stable climate and clean water. They say unused nitrogen emits carbon and phosphorus and nitrogen run-off from fertilizer are considered to causes toxic algal blooms that contaminate drinking water supplies and create dead zones.
Source: NAFB News Service