This Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) Phase I project will determine whether a mass balance approach can be used to evaluate inputs and outputs in complex agronomic systems and whether this soil nutrient management model can be delivered via an online software platform to help farmers improve the sustainability of their soil nutrient management practices. The use of mass balance approaches is common in other complex systems but infrequently used in agronomic systems because of the dominance of soil testing as a means to evaluate plant-available nutrient content. These tests are poorly suited to complex production systems or those that use biologically derived nutrient sources, such as animal manures. Thus they are not an effective means of evaluating nutrient management strategies in organic or intensive vegetable systems ? both of which are growing sectors of US agriculture. This project will increase knowledge about the factors that drive the major nutrient flows in these systems, leading to the development of a soil nutrient management decision support tool that will enable farmers to respond to this information and effect change in their soil management practices.
The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is a decrease in the over-application of animal-based soil amendments through the adoption of a mass balance approach to soil nutrient management. This approach can be used to increase the sustainability of intensive crop production practices by reducing the accumulation of nutrients which increase weed competition, crop susceptibility to pests and pathogens, and nutrient losses that contaminate water supplies, damage natural aquatic ecosystems, and increase greenhouse gases. This project will greatly improve an existing mass balance model of soil nutrient content and research and prototype a nutrient budgeting software tool that will guide vegetable and specialty crop farmers toward adopting more sustainable soil management practices while increasing the profitability of their farm businesses. Because of the financial incentive to adopt this technology, the end result of this project will be a highly commercializable online software tool that will interact with an existing farm planning, management and record keeping software platform that is already in use by more than 5000 farmers across the U.S. The nutrient management tool to be developed will impact the technology, agricultural, and environmental monitoring and management sectors and benefit the more than 250,000 US specialty crop producers.
This project’s goal is to develop a computational model and farmer-facing software application that work together to help organic vegetable farmers improve the management of their soils and reduce the overuse of compost and raw manure as a soil fertility strategy. A majority of organic farmers regularly over apply compost and /or raw manure to their fields in an attempt to increase soil fertility and soil organic matter content (Thomas Morris, Extension Agronomist, University of Connecticut, pers. Comm.), but this practice reduces overall farm profitability, increases crop susceptibility to pests and diseases and is ineffective and possibly even counterproductive in increasing yields (Mohler 1996; Workneh et al. 1993). In addition there are well-documented large-scale negative environmental and societal impacts to overusing fertilizers (Hambridge 1938; NRC, 1989; Matson and others 1997, Friedland et al., 1991). With our approach we can help farmers make more informed soil nutrient management decisions that can ultimately reduce the amount of compost and manure that is used in soil fertility management on organic vegetable farms. This project had two outcomes: (1) the development of a database of nutrient concentration values for the most common vegetable crops that are grown in the northeastern US. This database will be used to estimate nutrient removal from soils and will help farmers understand, after each harvest, how much of each nutrient was removed from the soil. (2) The design for a software tool that allows farmers to track and manage their soil’s nutrient needs by estimating nutrient removals from their fields so that they can optimize their use of soil amendments such as compost and manure. Together the nutrient concentration database and software tools can guide farmers toward more cost-effective and sustainable nutrient management.
