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You'd reduce fertilizer usage if you could prevent farmers from over-fertilizing. Simply following directions would be a huge step forward. Unfortunately there isn't a technical fix for stupid.

There is more to fertilizer than just Nitrogen compounds so you would still need a fertilizer, it just wouldn't need to be as nitrogen rich. And the farmers will continue to over fertilize.

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"And the farmers will continue to over fertilize."

The smart corporate farmers don't over fertilize, it costs real money. Research the technology that they use, satellites, GPS and automated tractors/spray rigs that adjust in real time for specific soil needs.

Where do you get the idea that they are over fertilizing? The vast majority of them are on slim margins and watch everything like a hawk so I find it unlikely, given the costs, and their equipment that they are rampantly over fertilizing.

Not to mention the fact that over fertilizing will often reduce crop yields. The idea that the runoff of fertilizer products into groundwater, streams, lakes and oceans must be the result of over fertilization is false. It's the result of gravity.

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