Farmers to the rescue

Standing in a field next to the house where he grew up, Todd Hesterman, a fourth-generation farmer in Napoleon, Ohio, picks up a clod of earth, examines it, then holds it to his nose. “You play in these soils long enough and you learn what looks and smells healthy,” he says.

In his John Deere cap and flannel shirt, Hesterman may look like a traditional family farmer. But in fact, he’s part of an agricultural vanguard, an evangelist for the use of precise data to raise crops more efficiently, with less impact on the environment.

With partners like Hesterman, we are building communities of farmers in critical watersheds who are changing the way American agriculture works.

Runoff from farms can cause "dead zones"

Farmers are a critical part of our nation’s economic and social fabric, but farming is also a major contributor to water pollution. Sediment and fertilizer runoff create algae-filled “dead zones” and pollute drinking water supplies.

Ohio farmer Todd Hesterman with his father

In Hesterman’s part of Ohio, some 5 million tons of topsoil erode every year into streams that feed Lake Erie. This sediment, along with algae blooms created by nutrient-rich runoff, threaten an $8 billion tourism and fishing industry, and drinking water for 11 million people.

“We can’t be farming and destroying a Great Lake,” says Hesterman. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Dead zones fed by fertilizer from farmland along the Mississippi River also plague the Gulf of Mexico. This year, record floods in the Midwest will likely create the largest dead zone ever — more than 8,500 square miles, an area equal to the size of New Jersey.

When too much fertilizer is applied to crops, the excess runs off and pollutes waterways.

Dead zones are also a part of life in the country’s largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay. The Bay has for centuries provided a bountiful harvest of blue crabs, oysters and striped bass sustaining thousands of jobs. It is also a major staging area for migrating waterfowl along the Atlantic Flyway.

But in recent decades, the once-abundant oyster population has crashed, falling to just 3% of historic levels. The iconic blue crab fishery is also threatened. A big part of the problem: fertilizer runoff from farms in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, West Virginia and Delaware.

More precise data can help

Much of this is not the fault of the farmers. Managing nutrients is hard. Without knowing exactly how much rain the land will get every day, a farmer cannot gauge exactly how much fertilizer to apply, or when.

Most farmers rely on general guidelines or get nutrient recommendations from crop advisors affiliated with fertilizer retailers, whose pay depends largely on how much fertilizer they sell. The result: About 50% of the fertilizer applied nationwide is not taken up by crops.

But it doesn't have to be this way. “We help farmers understand tools like corn stalk tests, which show what percentage of nitrogen they applied to a crop was actually utilized,” says Karen Chapman, EDF’s Great Lakes director.

Another problem is the the historic destruction of wetlands and tree buffers across the Corn Belt to increase crop yields. The loss of those buffers has impaired the land’s ability to absorb nutrients. These vanishing set-asides also reduce erosion and flooding and serve as vital habitat for birds, bugs and bats, which help farmers by pollinating and controlling pests.

The good news? Carefully recreating wetlands and buffers can help capture 80% of the nitrogen runoff draining from Corn Belt farms.

The tractor network

We know farmers can learn a lot from other farmers, so we teamed up with the Iowa Soybean Association to expand the On-Farm Network.

This rapidly growing, multi-state coalition helps farmers collect data about conditions in their fields to determine how much fertilizer their crops really need.

“We encourage them to share best practices at local meetings," said Chapman. "The farmers themselves are our best ambassadors.”

The farmers are often motivated as much by their sense of calling as by their aversion to waste. “I’m not a radical environmentalist, but I believe we have to be good stewards of what is entrusted to us,” says Matt Young, a dairy farmer in Lancaster County, PA.

Highlighted areas represent states where EDF has farming partnerships

Today, the On-Farm Network includes almost 1,000 farmers working nearly 1 million acres in 11 states, spanning the critical watersheds of the Mississippi, Chesapeake Bay, Great Lakes and North Carolina. These farmers have cut fertilizer use by 25% on average, saving $16 per acre, without reducing yields.

And that’s just the beginning. “Our goal is to influence how farmers manage nutrients nationally,” says Suzy Friedman, EDF’s Deputy Director of Working Lands.

“We need to make precise use of fertilizer the rule instead of the exception. And we need to rebuild wetlands and buffers while allowing farmers to meet food and fiber demands. Then we can make a real difference in water quality in the United States,” says Friedman.