Researchers to monitor farming's nitrous oxide emissions using Yorkton CBC tower

Researchers are hoping to start measuring nitrous oxide emissions over hundreds of kilometres near Yorkton, Sask., with the goal of reducing greenhouse gases.

Nitrogen fertilizer is an important nutrient for growing crops in many parts of the world including Saskatchewan, but it's also an "incredibly potent" greenhouse gas.

A collaboration network called CanN20Net consists of researchers from six different universities working to reduce the nitrous oxide emissions.

Erin Daly, the group's project manager, said nitrogen fertilizer isn't 100 per cent efficient and about 50 per cent of the fertilizer that producers are applying is not being translated into crop products.

"Some of that fertilizer is being lost through processes like runoff, or leaching or gaseous losses like nitrous oxide," Daly said on CBC Radio's The 306.

Nitrous oxide — a byproduct of nitrogen fertilizer use — is about 300 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, said Daly.

"It's also incredibly long-lived in our atmosphere," she said. "[It will] degrade over about 100 years compared to something like methane, which is about 10 years."

LISTEN | The impact of nitrogen fertilizer on the environment: 

The 3066:15The impact of nitrogen fertilizer on the environment

Nitrogen fertilizer is a useful tool for farmers to grow more crops, but using it leads to greenhouse gas emissions. A network of researchers is dedicated to helping farmers reduce their carbon footprint. The 306 speaks to the project manager to learn more.

Despite that, it's also vital for the health of soil fertility and is needed for producers to meet demand.

"Without nitrogen fertilizer we really wouldn't be able to attain the yields or the global food security that we currently have," said Daly. 

"Moving forward, we know that [the] global population is only going to increase and therefore we need to make sure that we're actually maintaining or even increasing our crop yields."

Daly and the team of researchers are working with farmers, policy makers, the federal government and producer organizations to make "meaningful progress" in reducing the nitrous oxide emissions.

The CBC broadcast tower near Yorkton is being used by the research team as a "tall tower," which Daly said allows them to take measurements of the emissions for hundreds of kilometres in range for data collection.

"We can verify that what producers are saying, which is that they're utilizing these best management practices," she said.

"Now we can actually have that data and take it and account for it in the national inventory report of greenhouse gas emissions."

Farmer tries to be efficient with nitrogen fertilizer use

Ian McCreary farms with his family in Bladworth, Sask., which is a small town about 90 kilometres south of Saskatoon. He uses nitrogen fertilizer in the liquid form because he says it's best for his small operation and gives him the most capacity to adjust the amount that's going specific to the requirements of that soil.

McCreary is cognizant of the greenhouse gas emissions from the fertilizer and said it caused him to do "quite a study" of how to use it as efficiently as possible.

"All of our land is mapped with an agronomist to identify zones that have specific properties of soil, water and topography … then all of those zones are tested for the amount of nitrogen that's required," said McCreary.

McCreary said he's had a lot of exposure to consultation with environmental groups and a national task force that looked at nitrogen oxide under a microscope.

But the broader question to McCreary is how much the agriculture industry is engaging with the environmental community in order to make sure all farmers get that exposure he did.

"I think that's the challenge that agriculture faces," he said.

"Many farmers have gone to zone mapping, many farmers have moved forward, some have not … but we are in a position to still of course make progress as an industry and I think we also have an obligation to make progress in telling the story of what works and the steps we have made to reduce nitrous oxide emissions and are going to continue to do to reduce nitrous oxide emissions."

McCreary said he remains optimistic about education and broadening the understanding of what might work to reduce emissions.