Carrots and Sticks - Getting Serious about Nitrogen Inputs

Humans have greatly altered the world’s nitrogen cycle over the past decades, primarily through industrial nitrogen fixation and fossil-fuel burning. This synthetic nitrogen – often used indirectly on organic farms – has allowed farmers to produce much more food, but has also caused a host of environmental problems worldwide. This workshop will highlight efforts to address this challenge in California’s central coast region, but will be relevant to other regions of the world where high-input crops are grown. To address nitrate pollution problems, the Central Coast Water Quality Control Board approved a regulation known as Ag Order 4.0 in April 2021, requiring major changes on organic and conventional farms in the region. This session will provide an overview of the Ag Order and ways in which it was improved to help growers comply.