Lake Erie algal bloom issue addressed at Bryan Rotary Club

The onus for the Lake Erie algal bloom issue might not be so heavily put on farmers, according to Joe Nester of Nester Ag, who presented to Bryan Rotary Club on Friday. The Bryan Times reports that, instead, some of the blame may lie with an environmental measure that he believes had an unintended consequence. Nester, who has been heavily involved in farming for 40 years and in research related to the Lake Erie issue for a decade, says that solubility of bloom-inducing phosphorous in soil has increased significantly from the days before the Clean Air Act. Nester, who has won numerous awards in the field of no-till farming, said he often asked himself why Lake Erie wasn’t green 30 years ago, when virtually no soil testing was done and fertilizer was applied using techniques in direct opposition with today’s best practices.