Les Lanyon: A Pioneer in Nutrient Management

Les Lanyon did not cut an imposing figure. In fact, the mild-mannered Penn State soil scientist was rather short and slight of build. But his impact on nutrient management in Pennsylvania was huge, according to his peers.

Lanyon, who died at the age of 55 on May 26, 2004, did pioneering work on agricultural nutrient flows and recycling.

“The loss of Les Lanyon left a big hole in our unit,” says Doug Beegle, a soil scientist in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. “He was a visionary and pioneer. A lot of what we know about the problem now goes back to his work in the 1980s when he looked at the nutrient flows from a global perspective. That big-picture view on nutrient flows that Les provided was the foundation of what is going on today.”

Agricultural engineer Bob Graves summed up Lanyon’s role in Pennsylvania nutrient management this way: “Les showed us the fact that we plain had more manure than the crops could utilize and changed the focus from manure storage and handling to what was coming in on the feed truck.”

Leon Ressler, director of Penn State Cooperative Extension in Lancaster County, believes Lanyon’s research in the 1980s—carefully analyzing nutrient movement on southeastern Pennsylvania farms—was (pun intended) groundbreaking. “The knowledge he provided about the whole-farm nutrient balance was a real eye-opener at the time,” he recalls.

Lanyon’s words, published almost 20 years ago, still ring true today. “Nutrient management often is viewed as a farm problem that can be solved by making farmers adopt new practices,” he wrote. “But the nutrient-management problem actually resulted from the way our modern food system evolved.

“In today’s food system, nutrient flows extend all over the globe. Corn and soybeans produced in Iowa are shipped to Pennsylvania to feed animals. Products from those animals go to urban centers to feed people. Nutrients accumulate where animals live, far from their original source, often leaking into surface and ground waters.

“Nutrient runoff from farms will undergo intense scrutiny, and farmers are likely to face increased pressure as government officials and environmentalists seek solutions,” Lanyon added. “We need to understand the consequences that the agricultural practices from which we all benefit have on the environment.”

—Jeff Mulhollem