In addition to carbon dioxide, water and sunlight, all plants need mineral nutrients to grow. The primary nutrients needed are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, though other secondary micronutrients are also essential. There are various methods to meet the fertility requirements of cotton, including the use of nitrogen-fixing cover crops, manures and soluble fertilizers. Applying fertilizer to crops encourages growth and optimizes yields reducing the amount of land needed to grow a bale of cotton.
While fertilizer is very useful for cotton growers, its sustainability relies on how well it is managed. Excess nitrogen in particular can cause challenges with water quality and greenhouse gases – and could delay cotton harvest, reducing fiber quality. Precision agricultural mapping can help growers understand precisely where to apply fertilizer and how much to apply, ensuring each plant only receives exactly as much as it needs. Today, almost 73% of U.S. cotton growers indicate that they employ some type of precision technology in their crop management, with most reporting that they use precision technology for the site-specific application of soil nutrients.1 Using this technology, farmers know what their crop needs, at what point crops require additional inputs, and exactly where in their fields fertilizer needs to be applied. This precision application minimizes excess applied nutrients and improves the sustainability of the crop.
Growers continue to implement new crop and land management practices to help balance nutrient needs with environmental risks. One example is the use of ground-based sensors to map soil texture to quantify the composition of different types of soil such as clay, silt and sand. These different types of soil can all have different fertility levels. So even if the soil is not exactly the same across a field, the use of ground-based sensors ensures that every plant gets only the nutrients it actually needs.2 Other beneficial practices include the planting of year-round cover crops, and planting field buffers that prevent nutrient runoff to local waterways.3
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