Farmers can’t predict their annual corn harvest with certainty, but with the help of new research from Michigan State University, they can now pinpoint specific parts of their fields that consistently produce either good or bad yields.
Farmers can’t predict their annual corn harvest with certainty, but with the help of new research from Michigan State University, they can now pinpoint specific parts of their fields that consistently produce either good or bad yields. Not only will this save them time and money; it will solve one of the most widespread environmental problems facing crop-producing regions – nitrogen loss.
“This is the first time anyone has been able to quantify how much small-scale yield variability there is in the United States Corn Belt,” said Bruno Basso, MSU professor of ecosystems science and lead author of the study. “Our findings allow farmers to know exactly which portions of their farm fields stable yields have – which allows them to better manage their variable fields to save money, reduce fertilizer losses and lower greenhouse gas emissions.”
Basso and his MSU co-authors – Guanyuan Shuai, Jinshui Zhang and Phil Robertson – discovered that almost all fields have certain areas with consistently low or high yields, meaning much of the fertilizer added to low-yielding areas will go unused and be lost to the environment. At the same time, unused nitrogen is lost to the environment rather than taken up by the crop. The study shows that lost nitrogen from 10 Midwest states totals nearly $1 billion of wasted fertilizer and 6.8 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually.
Read more at Michigan State University
Image Credit: Michigan State University
