Tag: nitrogen
-
How About That Water Quality? Ocean Acidification
Talking about water quality isn’t most people’s idea of the ideal ice breaker. In the Lowcountry (loosely defined as coastal South Carolina and Georgia), folks typically find common ground discussing the region’s warm weather, great food, vibrant culture and remarkable history. But water quality is quickly becoming the talk of the town as locals are…
-
The simple river-cleaning tactics that big farms ignore
Ione Cleverley wasn’t eager to break up with her tenant, who had been farming 88 acres of her central Iowa land for more than a decade. He was affable and hardworking, but after harvesting his corn and soybeans, the farmer left her fields un-planted. Cleverley had learned that each spring, as the soil warmed and…
-
Iowa’s water quality problems: What you need to know
In early 2018 the Iowa Legislature took a step in addressing Iowa’s water quality with a plan to reduce nitrogen and phosphorous levels by 45 percent. Kelsey Kremer/The Register It seems like Iowans have feuded over water quality since farmers began draining the swampy prairie more than a century ago to turn it into some…
-
Simple River-Cleaning Tactics That Big Farms Ignore
Iowa is the largest corn producer in the U.S.—and the second largest producer of nitrate pollution in the Mississippi River Basin. Photograph by Amy Toensing, National Geographic Creative. By Elizabeth Royte. Photographs by Dennis Chamberlin PUBLISHED December 7, 2017. This story was produced in collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, a nonprofit investigative…
-
Water quality deal lacks allure in swath of Iowa
Photo: Jack Boyer of Reinbeck refills his air seeder Nov. 10 before spreading for cover crops on his farm in Grundy and Tama counties, where he has been growing cover crops for seven years. A retiree of John Deere, he researched and experimented with different crops on his own land and found that cover crops…
