Crops and animals need nutrients to grow and reproduce. Ideally, farmers apply manure and fertilizer to croplands and then the feed the harvested crops to their animals, which then produce more manure, continuing the production cycle. Although much of the nutrients are transferred between crops and animals, excess nutrients can get stored in the soil or lost to the environment through surface runoff or groundwater leaching.
One tool that can help gauge these losses over a geographic or hydrologic region are nutrient budgets, which provide a balance between the nutrients available to be applied to cropland and the nutrients removed in crop harvests. The resulting balance indicates the potential for nutrients to be stored in the soil or lost to the environment. When viewed on a geographic scale, nutrient budgets provide policy-makers and managers an ability to assess the effectiveness of current and alternative practices, incentives, and regulatory actions.
NEW! (08/28/09)
The nitrogen budget just been completed, and the phosphorus budget has been updated with data from the 2007 U.S. Census of Agriculture and 2007 fertilizer sales reports.
Additional resources
State Contacts
| Jim Pease, VA (Project Lead) |
| Dave Hansen, DE |
| Alan Collins, WV |
| Doug Parker, MD |
| Doug Beegle, PA |