Why America's Crops Are Bleeding Nitrogen

A $34.7M research network launches to fix the data gap driving nitrogen fertilizer loss on US farms

8 May 2026

A five-year, $34.7mn research initiative launched this spring to address one of agriculture's most persistent inefficiencies: the chronic loss of nitrogen fertiliser before crops can absorb it. The AgNUE network spans 13 universities and institutions across the United States and Europe, operating 12 intensively monitored field stations to generate the kind of granular, standardised data that current fertiliser guidance lacks.

The problem is well understood. In many US production systems, more than half of applied nitrogen escapes into air and waterways each season through a combination of biological processes and misapplied inputs. The financial and environmental costs are significant. What has proven harder to fix is the quality of the models used to guide application decisions.

Those models, researchers argue, were built on measurements that do not capture how nitrogen behaves across varied soils, climates, and farming practices. AgNUE aims to change that by combining continuous field measurement with isotopic techniques and microbial analysis, feeding results into a shared, open-access repository built on uniform quality protocols.

"If we want to reduce nitrogen losses at scale, we need models that reflect what actually happens in the field," said Diego Abalos, principal investigator at Aarhus University, which hosts the network.

NC State University leads the American field research, working alongside the University of Illinois and Colorado State University. The stakes for US agriculture are considerable: maize alone accounts for the dominant share of nitrogen fertiliser demand among major American row crops, meaning improved application guidance would affect a substantial portion of the input market.

The initiative is funded primarily by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, with additional support from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research. It represents the most coordinated transatlantic effort yet to rebuild nitrogen modelling from field-level data upward.

Whether the resulting dataset will translate into commercially adopted guidance tools remains to be seen. Agricultural research has a long history of promising findings that move slowly into practice. The next five years will test whether better data is, on its own, enough to change behaviour.