Nitrate, Agriculture and the Environment

There is widespread public concern about the effects of nitrate derived from the use of fertilizers in farming on water quality and public health. But research on nitrate during the past decade has revealed wide discrepancies between public perceptions and reality. The main problems from nitrate are in fact ecological changes in coastal and estuarine waters and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere. This gas, largely derived from nitrate, is a threat to the ozone layer in the stratosphere and is also a greenhouse gas. This book builds on Farming, Fertilizers, and the Nitrate Problem (CABI, 1991) by Addiscott, Whitmore, and Powlson, but has been restructured to take into account these new developments and to bring out more clearly the role of politics and economics in the "nitrate problem."