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IN THE KNOW ABOUT THE “O”
NEW RESEARCH SHOWS ORGANIC FARMING CAN HELP CURB NITROGEN POLLUTION
www.ota.com
nitrogen on earth is getting transformed into the reactive form, primarily through the creation of synthetic fertilizer.
Agriculture uses a huge amount of reactive nitrogen to grow crops, and much of that nitrogen is lost to the environment during the food production process. As the reactive nitrogen moves through the environment, it creates a cascade of detrimental environmental impacts.
Excess reactive nitrogen contributes to climate change. Fertilizer can get converted into nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more powerful than CO2. Nitrous oxide can enter the stratosphere and eat away at the ozone; it’s an important contributor to ozone depletion right now. Reactive nitrogen forms smog and contributes to acid rain when converted to nitric acid. Nitrogen runoff gets into lakes, causing toxic algal blooms. Nitrogen runoff pollutes oceans, leading to oxygen loss and killing everything in giant areas called “Dead Zones.” In 2017, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico was the size of New Jersey – the biggest ever seen.
The nitrogen challenge is to maximize the bene ts of reactive nitrogen, while minimizing the negative environmental and human health impacts.
Organic does not use synthetic fertilizer. All the nitrogen on organic farms comes from recycled sources like compost/ manure, or a small amount of new reactive nitrogen from nitrogen- xing bacteria in the roots of cover crops or other legumes. Those same sources also build a complex and rich soil able to hold onto nitrogen longer rather than just allowing it to run off the eld.
This research shows that rather than converting benign nitrogen into polluting nitrogen, organic farming practices overwhelmingly recycle reactive nitrogen.
For more information on The Organic Center and the science behind organic food and farming, visit www.organic-center. org. The Center is an independent non-pro t 501(c)(3) research and education organization operating under the administrative auspices of the Organic Trade Association.
Important new research from the University of Virginia in collaboration with The Organic Center shows that organic farming can help reduce nitrogen pollution on a global scale. On the heels of The Organic Center’s groundbreaking study last year showing how organic soils help to diminish climate change, this latest study offers even more solid proof that organic food and farming create a cleaner global environment.
Climate change, smog, acid rain, dead zones and the ozone hole are real issues affecting the planet, and nitrogen pollution plays a key role in each. Plants need nitrogen to grow, it is essential to life on earth and is present in all living systems. But too much of that same nitrogen can cause environmental problems. The University of Virginia and The Organic Center collaboration nds that organic farming – through its recycling of nitrogen – contributes far less to the pool of new reactive nitrogen in the environment and can help to alleviate the critical problem of nitrogen pollution.
Agriculture adds a large amount of nitrogen into the environment during the food production process. This very timely research shows that many common organic farming practices, like composting and the use of manure fertilization in place of synthetic fertilizers, can recycle reactive nitrogen already in the global system rather than introducing new reactive nitrogen into the environment. Organic farming thus has a much smaller environmental impact on the global scale.
The study, led by a team of researchers in Dr. James Galloway’s lab at the University of Virginia, found that while organic and conventional farms have comparable on-farm nitrogen losses for crop systems, organic farming helps prevent nitrogen pollution by recycling three times more reactive nitrogen than conventional.
The study also found that almost all of the nitrogen used to produce the food in a conventional food-based diet – 93 percent — was newly created reactive nitrogen. In comparison, for an average diet of organic foods, only 33 percent of the nitrogen used to produce the food was new reactive nitrogen. The rest
of the nitrogen used for plant growth in organic production was already in existence and was being recycled.
Maximizes the bene ts of nitrogen
Nitrogen in some form is required for all life. Most nitrogen is found in the air and can’t be used by plants or other living things, and does not contribute to air or water pollution.
But when that nitrogen goes through a chemical process, it becomes reactive. Reactive nitrogen is what’s used for plant and animal growth, but reactive nitrogen also can cause a host of environmental problems. More and more of the benign
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