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Empowering the Agricultural Supply Chain

Environmental Defense Fund’s N Balance Model

Overview

As of Version 4.2, the Fieldprint Platform now incorporates Environmental Defense Fund’s N Balance Model for Fieldprint Projects. Environmental Defense Fund’s N Balance Model is designed to help farmers and agricultural stakeholders optimize nitrogen use efficiency. It balances nitrogen inputs, such as fertilizers, with outputs, including crop yields, to minimize nitrogen losses to the environment. By doing so, it helps reduce water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and other environmental impacts associated with excessive nitrogen use, promoting more sustainable and environmentally friendly agricultural practices. N Balance is a standalone output and is not directly connected to Field to Market’s eight sustainability metrics. N Balance is configured for data entered in 2024 forward. N Balance reporting is not enabled for earlier crop years.

Crops Supported

N Balance is supported only for corn (grain), soybeans, and wheat.

N Balance Inputs

N Balance required additional crop year inputs beyond those needed for the eight sustainability metrics. If enabled for a Fieldprint Project, the following inputs are needed:

  • Dominant cover crop type?
    • If applicable, Dominate legume species?
  • Did you incorporate the cover crop into the soil with a tillage operation?
  • What was the approximate top growth of the cover crop before its termination?
  • If applicable, Did you bale the corn stover?

If your Project Administrator has indicated N Balance is enabled for your project, new N Balance inputs will appear in specific places during crop year data entry.  Remember, N Balance is only applicable for Corn (grain), Soybeans, and Wheat crops.

You must have opted into a project, and you must have associated the crop years with the project before inputs will appear. At this time, there is no N Balance-specific output or results. The output for N Balance is in the form of a Project-level report generated by Project Administrators.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if I’ve already completed a crop year before the Project Administrator enabled N Balance for my project?

  • It’s possible that you have already completed (i.e. completed data entry, calculated, finalized) a crop year before your Project Administrator enabled N Balance. In this case, return to the crop year and edit the data. Once in edit mode, the new inputs will be available for data entry.

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