Traverse City Record-Eagle

Michigan

September 12, 2012

Farmers encouraged to cut back on fertilizer use

By MATTHEW HALL Special to the Record-Eagle

LANSING — Michigan farmers who cut their fertilizer use could help reduce greenhouse gases.

And if done through a new emissions trading program, they could get other industries to pay them to do it without harming crop yields.

The method encourages farmers to lower emissions of nitrous oxide from fertilizer. Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas linked to human-induced global warming.

"It's a carrot rather than a stick," said Adam Diamant, technical executive at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., which developed the method with Michigan State University scientists.

Financial incentives could help the environment better than penalties, he said.

Here's how it works: Researchers developed a way to accurately measure the greenhouse gas reductions farmers achieve. That way, farmers can be awarded the right amount of credits to sell in an emissions-trading market.

Such markets allow increases in emissions somewhere to be offset by equal decreases in emissions somewhere else. Credits can be earned by reducing emissions, by increasing efficiency or even by planting trees, which convert carbon dioxide into oxygen.

Another business can buy those credits instead of reducing its own emissions.

"This innovative approach is a way to achieve a win for farmers, for industrial organizations that may be required to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, for the atmosphere and for improved surface water quality from reduced nitrate runoff in the upper Midwest all the way to the Gulf of Mexico," Diamant said

In a "cap- and-trade" market, regulations limit the amount of emissions a business can generate, and buying credits may be cheaper than making internal reductions in the purchaser's own emissions.

In a voluntary market like the one in which this method is using, businesses voluntarily buy credits to meet internal sustainability goals or to gain an environmentally friendly label.

Businesses also might find voluntary trading to be good practice should any mandatory regulations come in the future.

The hope is that the method will encourage farmers in Michigan and elsewhere in the Great Lakes not to over-fertilize crops, helping to keep in check the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, said the method's developers. And the strategy offers additional savings without cutting yields.

"It's also a way to reduce costs of fertilizer on the farm land," said Neville Millar, senior research associate at MSU's Kellogg Biological Station in Hickory Corners who field-tested the method.

Farmers can earn the credits by reducing fertilizer, better timing its application, using alternatives that inhibit nitrogen processes in the soil and containing nitrate runoff that can convert to nitrous oxide as it drains away.

Whether businesses participate may depend on the nature of the market and whether they value the environmentally friendly label.

Farmers themselves may join the market so long as it's voluntary and yields aren't hurt, said Bob Boehm, manager of the Commodity and Marketing Department at the Michigan Farm Bureau. "If it's voluntary and it will help, I'm sure there would be some people that would participate."

Farmers and businesses can now trade emissions in the designated north central region that covers Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois.

MATTHEW HALL writes for Great Lakes Echo.

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