It should be no surprise that sustainability is the most often used word here at the World Agricultural Forum’s World Ag Congress in St. Louis since the agriculture industry as a whole remains under the microscope when it comes to environmental issues.

Another company making a difference in that arena is St. Louis-based AGROTAIN International and I talked with president Mike Stegmann today about some of the ways they are helping. “Sustainability means different things to different people but at AGROTAIN International we’re talking a look at fertilizer specifically,” Mike said. “We truly believe there’s ways to use fertilizer, be more efficient, get more, cost less and still do the right thing for the environment.” AGROTAIN is the world’s largest producer of StabilizedNitrogen™ fertilizers.

Along those lines, AGROTAIN has been participating in a study with USDA’s Agriculture Research Service on the impact of nitrogen fertilizer on climate change. “We wanted to understand what the climate change benefit is of using a product like AGROTAIN to using conventional fertilizer or no fertilizer at all,” Mike says.

In fact, the study has found there is a dramatic reduction in nitrous oxide emissions when nitrogen fertilizer is applied with AGROTAIN. More on that will be revealed tomorrow here at the Congress by Jerry Hatfield with USDA’s National Soil Tilth Research Laboratory.

You can listen to my interview with Mike here: waf-09-agrotain.mp3

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