Best management practices are something farmers hear about often. There are BMPs, as the jargon goes, for nearly every aspect of agriculture, and most other professions for that matter.
In many cases, producers might tend to shrug off a set of practices suggested by governments or associations as unenforceable rules suggested by those who don’t do the work, while only pretending to do it on an ideal farm.
Typically BMPs are suggested and not legislated. But legislation often starts out life as a set of BMPs and whether followed or not, wind up becoming laws at a future date.
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Usually, however, the more industry tries to follow the prescribed path, the longer it takes for the BMPs to become publicly popular laws.
Fertilizer falls into a category where governments create laws to meet voter demands, whether based on good science and practical application, or not.
When it comes to fertilizer use and misuse, real problems were created by outdated practices that cost the environment and the farmer.
Specifically, when it came to nitrogen, valuable nutrients were being lost in huge amounts in areas where too much moisture carried away products for which farmers had paid good money. Or in the case of manure, farmers had devoted a lot of time, effort and money into raising the animals, making the manure usable and getting it to fields.
In the EU and many parts of the U.S., farmers must meet tight application standards as a result.
The fertilizer industry has been proactive in giving growers some BMPs that meet a variety of needs.
The Four Rs, right product at the right rate, time and place, is now omnipresent in the farming community.
For farmers who operated before 2007, those rules were learned the hard way, with negative margins as their guide.
Any time that nitrogen is not reaching plant roots, it costs money in lost production and application.
This set of BMPs can put up to $65 per acre on the bottom line and drop greenhouse gas emissions by 15 to 25 percent. Those emissions are paid for by the producer, so if they can be avoided avoided, farms turn greener on many levels.
Producers already following those BMPs in Alberta can be paid for off-set credits under the Nitrous Oxide Emissions Reduction Protocol. But prairie-wide NERP is for another column.
