Nutrientstar, a New Assessment Program for Fertilizer Management Tools and Products.

Farmers across the Corn Belt want to manage fertilizer for greater productivity and profit, and to be recognized for their stewardship rather than continuously blamed for the water quality problems in major lakes and rivers linked to fertilizer losses. The agriculture marketplace is flooded with tools and products claiming to help farmers manage fertilizer. Such tools include optical sensors and decision support software and technologies, and products like nitrogen stabilizers. But how do farmers know which tool or product will help them manage fertilizer, and what are the benefits? The tools and products perform differently based on regional climate and soils, management scenarios, crops, annual precipitation and equipment. However, many companies market their tools and products as applicable to most commodity crops, despite the absence of publicly available data showing broad applicability of the tools and products. Farmers and their advisors have little other than marketing information to help them choose which tool or product is right for their operation, and under what circumstances, and it is expensive for farmers to measure how much they might be improving fertilizer management by using a tool or product. 

Enter NutrientStar – a program to scientifically assess fertilizer management tools and products and report those findings to the public. NutrientStar increases transparency and access to data on performance of commercially available fertilizer management tools and products; provides a common set of standards and protocols for measuring performance; and aims to spark further innovation, research and development of fertilizer efficiency tools and products. NutrientStar offers broad benefits to many agriculture stakeholders. By establishing common field trial protocols for on-farm research within an agro-ecoregional framework, companies can test tools and products broadly and inexpensively, yet in a scientifically robust way. By providing information about how tools and products perform according to environmental and management conditions, farmers and advisors can make better farm-appropriate decisions. By quantifying fertilizer efficiency gains the tools and products achieve, food supply chain companies – as well as retail consumers – can better understand how the grain they buy is grown more sustainably. Visit http://nutrientstar.org/ for more information.