He's got it mostly all wrong. Fertilizer isn't the major contributor it's livestock manure from large farms. If you aren't aware crop farming is a very low margin business. Fertilizer costs real money so if you over fertilize you're likely to lose money.
It's changing slowly but large livestock operations used to spread manure where it was convenient, not where the extra fertilizer was needed. Now they're required to file plans, complete with soil tests to show they're putting the manure where it's less likely to be a problem.
When I left the fertilizer business over twenty years ago we were helping the large livestock farms begin composting. If you rid the manure of it's largest component which is water then hauling a load to a distant field is way more possible.
Hard for some to believe but people who sold fertilizer were encouraging there customers to use less! Imagine a car dealer telling you not to buy an additional car.
The government also had a program where they would pay farmers to plant grass strips along waterways with the idea the strips would intercept the nutrients from fertilizer or manure before they reached the water. However I believe funding for that program was cut which may be adding to the problem.
This seems like a silly distinction. Where's all the feed from that fuels the manure? It's plain obvious this problem is caused by our greatly expanded production of fertilizer since the Haber-Bosch process.
A variable is the water temperature and it’s oxygenation level.
Shading the feeder waterways with 20 m belts of trees, using carbon credits to offset the establishment costs then compensating farmers for the lost area should help.
Everyone is winning. The higher oxygenated cooler water will utilise nitrogen and phosphate more effectively, less nitrogen and phosphate will get into the water as it’s absorbed by trees and less fertiliser will be required because soil hydrology will improve, reducing the amount that runs off instead of turning into plants.
Every 2km of waterway bank planted would hold 1500 tonne of carbon eventually. Erosion would decrease so some local bridge and road infrastructure budgets could go towards more planting. And everywhere you saw corridors of trees in paddocks you would think of native animals traisping along their natural highways.
Humans won’t cooperate and go backwards financially and or reputationally. This would potentially avoid that. It’s not the optimum but would have a positive impact for all involved and a chance of success.
It is a damn important one - going with say novrk fertilizer which breaks down from being "too pressurized" like in depths of water as heat bursts would be less bad than red tides won't do any good when the cause is pigshit.
Plus even if we were fighting wars for guano still manure could have still caused blooms.
It's changing slowly but large livestock operations used to spread manure where it was convenient, not where the extra fertilizer was needed. Now they're required to file plans, complete with soil tests to show they're putting the manure where it's less likely to be a problem.
When I left the fertilizer business over twenty years ago we were helping the large livestock farms begin composting. If you rid the manure of it's largest component which is water then hauling a load to a distant field is way more possible.
Hard for some to believe but people who sold fertilizer were encouraging there customers to use less! Imagine a car dealer telling you not to buy an additional car.
The government also had a program where they would pay farmers to plant grass strips along waterways with the idea the strips would intercept the nutrients from fertilizer or manure before they reached the water. However I believe funding for that program was cut which may be adding to the problem.