Tennessee Corn Joins Nutrient Reduction Task Force

To meet the global demands for our agricultural products, Tennessee agriculture relies heavily on a consistent and dependable transportation system including rail, rivers and roadways. 

The Mississippi River is vital to Tennessee agriculture and to an additional 12 states.  Sixty percent of all grain exported from the U. S. is shipped on the Mississippi River through the Port of New Orleans and the Port of South Louisiana to the Gulf Mexico.

The Mississippi River is the second-longest river in North America, flowing 2,350 miles from its source at Lake Itasca through the center of the continental United States to the Gulf of Mexico. 

The Mississippi River water runoff is an area of about 3.2 million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles) including all or parts of 32 states and two Canadian provinces, about 40% of the continental United States. The Mississippi River watershed is the fourth largest in the world, extending from the Allegheny Mountains in the east to the Rocky Mountains in the west. The Amazon for comparison drains about 7.1 million square kilometers.

Nutrient runoff from crop production has been linked to contributing to the Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Zone.  This is an area of low dissolved oxygen that can kill fish and other marine life.  Although the Hypoxia Zone is naturally occurring, nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilized agricultural land is thought to have been a contributor to an increase in the dead zone annual size.

The United States Geological Survey estimates that roughly 5% of the nitrogen and 5% of phosphorus delivered to the Gulf of Mexico is contributed by resources from within Tennessee.  Since 2015 the Tennessee Department of Agriculture (TDA) and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) have been working together on the Tennessee Nutrient Reduction Framework to accomplish long-term nutrient reduction. 

In March and April, leaders from Tennessee Corn and the Tennessee Soybean joined with TDA, TDEC, USDA-NCRS, UTIA, and Tennessee Farm Bureau for nutrient strategy discussions. From these discussions, a Nutrient Reduction Task Force is being created in Tennessee.  This Task Force will work to assemble all available data into a summary report.  This report will tell the story of TN Agriculture and its efforts to reduce nutrient runoff with the adoption of no-till farming practices, cover crops, using recommended fertilizer rates and of variable rate technology.