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Half of nitrogen applied to crops is lost



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This story originally appeared in Eos and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalistic collaboration to strengthen coverage of the climate story.
Nitrogen use efficiency, an indicator that describes how much fertilizer reaches a harvested crop, has decreased by 22 percent since 1961, according to new findings by an international group of researchers who compared and averaged global data sets.
Excess nitrogen from fertilizer and manure pollutes water and air, eats away ozone in the atmosphere and harms plants and animals. Excess nitrogen can also react to become nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than …

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