 First of all, thank you so much Dr. Ray for this opportunity to present here. My name is Rishi Prashad and I'm an assistant professor and extension specialist in the department of crop soul and environmental sciences, as well as animal science department. In this presentation, I'm going to talk about sustainability. That's been a pretty hot topic right now. Everybody talks about sustainability. So let's first start by defining the term sustainability. I looked into some of the definitions online and found that sustainability is considered as a pattern of resource use that aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in present, but also for future generations. There's another another definition of sustainability which says meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Now the question is why we want to be sustainable. I mean, why I mean, and if you look around some of the issues that we have, you know, one of the biggest challenge that we face today is the human population, you know, right now we are 7 billion. By 2050 will be 9 billion. And in order to feed this 9 billion people, the food production has to be increased by 70%. And that that's going to put a lot of pressure on the farmers, the people who produce food in order to feed this rising population. But at the same time, it also puts tremendous pressure on the environment, because agriculture and environment are interconnected, and, you know, we cannot separate these two things out. But first I'd like to define you some of the kinds of pollution as it relates to environment and there are two types of pollution. One we call as point source pollution. And the second is called as the non point source pollution so point source pollution as you know it's pretty straightforward, where you can identify the source of pollution like say for example if you see a pipe coming out of a affluent from industry or a sparkling affluent, we can point out and that is called as point source pollution same thing. If you see a smoke stack coming from a factory, you can point it and then say that's a point source pollution. But then is there's other type of pollution where you cannot point out and one of that is called as that and that is also considered as diffuse or indirect. The example of that is the excess fertilizers or the herbicides or the insecticides that comes from the agricultural or residential areas. Similarly sediments, you know, I mean they're very difficult to point out that's why we call them as non point source of pollution. So thinking about agriculture and sustainability and environment. Unfortunately, there are two nutrients that that is agriculturally important, but also their environmental concern and their nitrogen and phosphorus, you know, plants cannot grow and produce without nitrogen and phosphorus, but excess of these nutrients, when they enter our environment, they cause a whole set of problems. For example, you know, you know, if you see this condition where the water is flowing out of agricultural land that water dissolves the nutrients and they are mostly nitrogen and phosphorus and it runs with the water and the water will go somewhere and eventually to creek. So they this water dumps that nutrient especially nitrogen and phosphorus in the creek. There's other route of the loss which is which we call as leaching so those places are those agricultural fields that are course textured. Where we have sandy soils in those areas, the water actually goes down the soil profile and hits the groundwater and that becomes a problem in the future. Speaking of water quality, you're very familiar and you have seen the stern floating around which we call as your profication where the fresh water body turns green and full of algae. And the other issue that that is very prevalent in this modern day is the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, you know, fresh kills and loss of aquatic habitats and there are several other issues related to the dead zone issue. So all these water quality problems, they do come from the nutrients that that are coming from several places and eventually coming to these reservoirs. The other important effect that these nutrients cause and especially these nutrient I'll say nitrogen that causes problems is the greenhouse gas effect. You know we have known carbon dioxide as greenhouse gas effect but I'll tell you that the nitrogen that comes or evolves as nitrous oxide I mean it has 298 times more warming potential than carbon dioxide for over and that and the effect remains for 100 years. The other problem with the nitrous oxide it causes the depletion of ozone and you all know that how important the ozone is actually it helps keep the UV rays. You know from reaching out to the to the earth. According to estimate, one of the estimate that came from the national proceedings of proceedings of agricultural sciences. I say that the Midwest alone, you know, from corn and soybean rotation, they release almost eight kilograms of nitrous oxide nitrous oxide per hectare per year. So you can multiply that number with the number of hectares or acres that we have in agriculture and you can imagine the amount of nitrous oxide that's that is released from agricultural lands and and then contributing to the greenhouse gas, and this effect in future so we need to be thinking about you know from a sustainability standpoint that how we can control the release or the movement of these nutrients which we specifically call it call them as nonpoint source into a water or air. Of course, you know, because of these environmental pollution, we have several laws and regulations in place and these laws and regulations will become strict in future, you know, because the demand for food is going to put tremendous pressure environment and in order to make the checks and balances. These regulations are going to play a big role on that. So, the question is, you know, how can we manage these nutrients and become a good environmental steward, and at the same time prevent the loss of these nutrients into into the environment. So if you look into the sources of nutrients there are three important sources of nutrients in agricultural system. I mean the first one is of course the native soil that has organic matter. And they provide nutrients to the plants. The second source of nutrient is the synthetic fertilizer, the commercial fertilizer that that many people apply. And the third important source of nutrient is the manure or compost that we typically apply on agricultural lands. So we need to be thinking about that how do we manage the three different forms of the source of nutrients that is being applied to agricultural land. And I often describe the the intersection or prevention of these nutrients through a practice which we call as agricultural best management practice in short form they are called as BMPs. You know, I was trying to look up for definition and I found and actually I like this. The definition given by Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, they define BMP as laws or it is defined as by law as a means or practice of combination of practices, determined by the coordinating coordinating agencies based on research and agricultural testing and expert review to be the most effective and practical on location means including economic and technological considerations from improving war quality in agricultural and urban discharges. I mean, so BMPs are truly very effective in reducing the nutrient losses. So let's talk about some of these BMPs. I mean what are some of the BMP that farmer can use or apply to his operation and and manage these nutrients and be a good environmental source to it. The first and foremost BMP is salt test, you know, salt test is pretty simple, and any person can go and collect salt samples and send to a salt testing lab and then the salt testing lab what they do is they classify these nutrients in different fertility status or rankings, you know, if you say for example your soul falls under a very low category it means that it can be benefited. If you apply fertilizer, but if say for example, if your soul falls under an extremely high category, there will be no benefit of adding any fertilizer. So why we want to waste money and then at the same time it's going to cause environmental concerns. The next BMP is extremely important and it's very emerging these days because of the advent of the digital agriculture, you know, and the precision farming. Say for example, you know this piece of land that you see that there are different colors in red and green and light green. So if you pull soul samples in a coordinated fashion in a grid grid pattern, and when you lay the salt test results you will come up with this map which we call as spatial fertility map right. And when you look at this map you see that there are certain areas in the red, which falls under extremely high or very high category, whereas there are areas in this map which falls under low or medium to high category right. The question is, if we have to apply fertilizer uniformly throughout the field. Of course, we, you know, we get, get benefited from fertilizer application in all those areas that are low, but then, you know those areas which are very high or extremely high. Even if you apply fertilizer I mean there's no economic benefit of this additional fertilizer, but it can cause problems especially from an environmental standpoint I mean they become the hotspots because now more nutrients would be a level for environmental conditions like runoff or leaching or even nitrous oxide emissions into the atmosphere. Now another important BMP is the four hours four hours are the practice of right rate right source right placement and right timing. So application of right rate is extremely important and again it is important from an economic standpoint as well I mean this is a graph on the right that you see on the x axis. There's a nitrogen application rate on the y axis it's dollar per unit area. Of course you look at the red, the fertilizer cost you know you can keep adding fertilizer but it's going to cause a linear increase in the total cost of your inputs. Right, the green bars they represent the yield of course when you're adding fertilizer, the yield is going to go up. And, but the problem is, you know you're also incurring additional costs. Right, so that's why the economists have come up with a, but with a point which we call as economic optimum rate. So at what point you know you are going to get the maximum economic return is called as economic optimum rate and that's the nitrogen recommendation that most of the agricultural universities provide, especially when you see that on a solstice report. That's what is written, and that is called as economic optimum rate. The other four are is the right placement, I mean these days fertilizers are expensive so you may be thinking about should we ban it should be injected or should we broadcast it. The next best man practices under four are is the right timing, you know you don't want to put all your fertilizer up front because if you do that you basically increase the risk of loss. Research have sewn consistently that there is a beneficial effect on yield if we do a split application of fertilizer. The other important BMT is to consider is to avoid applying any manure commercial fertilizer when there is a flash rainfall, rainfall warning, you know it should not be putting fertilizer that time because it's going to flow out from the agricultural land. So the source speaking about source you know many people think about what is the right source to use should we use fertilizer should we use manure. So when it comes to manure application you know into be considering that it is highly heterogeneous and it should be tested before application, you know, if you're using manure, there are laws that are that govern like what rate should be applied, for example, NRCS 590 guidelines and P index should be used when using manure. The other important BMPs that is extremely important is adoption of conservation practice I mean these days a lot of farmers are moving towards a no till or a minimum till system and that helps to prevent erosion, especially the soils moving into the agricultural lands, moving from agricultural lands into the water bodies. The next is adoption of filter strips around the waterways, riparian forest buffers, grass waterways, wetlands, you know windbreaks. I mean these are some of the excellent conservation practices that keeps the nutrients running into the waterways. Finally in summary I would like to say that in order for a sustainable nutrient management and be a great environmental stewardship it starts with manure and soil testing. We need to adopt for our practices they are highly effective in improving nutrient efficiencies preventing economic losses and environmental problems. And finally adoption of conservation practices are extremely instrumental in reducing nutrient losses in the environment. With that I would like to thank you for your time and if you have any questions feel free to send me an email and I will be happy to talk about it. Thank you. So Rishi are there any demonstration areas or demonstration locations if you can answer very quickly where farmers can learn more about this and then especially in commercial horticulture side of things what do you see the implications. I mean one of the main thing is you know the fertilizer application rates you know that should be based on the recommendations I mean that is one of the best ways to start or thinking about preventing any nutrient losses or reduction into the environment. We also have as a part of the conservation you know demonstration we have our ongoing CIG grant that where we are demonstrating the effect of adoption of cover crops into the no till system adoption of cover crop basically to reduce nutrient losses and how does that improve the water quality so we do have free sites in Alabama but they are all in the row crop side from a commercial horticultural you know standpoint I don't think we have any project but I feel like the principles are the same irrespective. I mean whether it's a row crop system whether it's a pasture or forage production system or even the horticulture system the principles state the same when it comes to nutrient management.