A lot has been written about the downstream environmental costs of inorganic nitrogen fertilizer.

Through an interview with Robert Anex, professor at the University of Wisconsin, this article explores its environmental costs upstream and downstream--from cradle to grave.

Lynn Laws is a communications specialist for Iowa State University and for the USDA-NIFA Sustainable Corn Project.

This resource is part of the USDA-NIFA funded project for climate and agriculture that gathered data from 35 field sites and thousands of farmers in 9 Midwestern states, with the goal of creating a suite of practices for corn-based systems.