Recently I read an Associated Press story in this paper titled “Nitrogen Pollutes U.S. Rivers and Steams.” It states that the “nations rivers and streams remain stubbornly polluted with nutrients that contaminate drinking water and fuel a gigantic dead zone for aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico.”
The focus of the article is the Mississippi River basin, however if you look closer at conditions of all of our nations waters, excess nutrients, in the form of nitrogen and phosphorus, is the No. 1 pollution problem. Both of these chemicals come predominately from runoff of agriculture lands. Runoff is simply rain that runs off the land into waterways.
So I’d like to tell you of two local upcoming events focused on this problem:
Feb. 19-20 the Schoolcraft Chapter of the Ozark Society (SCOS) is co-sponsoring and hosting a conference on regenerative agriculture, “Farming and Ranching for the Future,” put on by Soil Regen, agsoilregen.com. Regenerative agriculture is a proven method of reducing and possibly eliminating the use of synthetic fertilizers, the primary cause of the nutrient pollution in our nations rivers.