I thought that I was modestly knowledgeable about turf management
issues but the scope of this question is VERY large. I'm going to
break this into categories approximating your questions so that it's a
little easier to digest.
1. FACILITIES
---------------
Golf course management is an old and well-established profession.
There are 17,000 golf courses in the U.S. According to the National
Golf Foundation, the leading states are :
Florida 1,363
California 1,046
Michigan 1,010
Texas 954
New York 907
Ohio 838
Pennsylvania 764
Illinois 741
North Carolina 624
Wisconsin 559
Minnesota 525
Indiana 498
Georgia 483
South Carolina 430
Iowa 418
Since golf course spending can vary substantially by category, it's
important to note that golf course break into these categories:
Public: 7,958
Resort: 995
Private: 4,256
Semi-Private: 3,541
Military: 197
Should you go forward with your marketing work, there's an excellent
database of golf courses at the Golf Magazine site. It's "Golf Course
Guide" is online here:
http://www.golfcourse.com/partners/index.html
For sports facilities, it's harder to tell exact numbers. First, the
Sports Turf Managers Association is only about 20 years old and
doesn't track this information in detail. In addition, its members
include school districts, universities, municipal parks, recreational
facilities, and professional facilities. Virtually every school will
have at least one sports field, some may have baseball, field hockey,
football, lacrosse, lawn tennis, rugby, soccer and softball (not to
mention cricket and polo) fields.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics and it's
"Digest of Education Statistics," there are more than 84,000
elementary schools; more than 20,000 secondary schools; and more than
4,800 combined and other schools. At the college level there are
about 2,200 4-year schools and another 1,700 2-year programs.
Unfortunately the Digest of Educational Statistics (2001) doesn't give
us much idea of sports facilities, though you can get a good idea of
numbers by states:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/digest/
For colleges, the top 5 states are:
California 322
New York: 320
Pennsylvania: 220
Texas: 176
Illinois: 169
2. AREA AND SPENDING
----------------------
The University of Missouri's Turfgrass Research Center has gathered
the best available data on the overall sports turf industry, including
golf courses and sports fields. The University of Missouri estimates
that there are 16,000 school sports facilities (the Department of
Education says that there are that many school DISTRICTS in the U.S.
and another 2,800 private schools). Note too that their estimates for
colleges ignore junior colleges.
Thus, because UMissouri's data is based on sample surveys -- and we
know the population of schools and colleges is far larger than their
estimates -- there's reason to believe that the TOTALS for these two
categories are low by 50% or more:
* Overall area: 2.8 million acres on which $457 per acre is spent on
equipment, products and services -- NOT including salaries. The
spending totals $1.29 billion.
* Spending breaks into these categories:
1. Parks and recreation: $480 million
2. Schools: $685 million
3. Colleges: $71 million
4. Professional sports: $52 million
Size of each:
1. Parks: average $284/acre over 130 acres.
2. Schools: $658/acre on an average of 65 acres
3. College: $1,075/acres on an average of 30 acres
4. Professional sports: $4,333/acre on an average of 15 acres
The University of Missouri study -- as well as excellent detail on
recommended care programs for sports fields and golf courses is at the
"Sports Turf Advantage" website:
http://agebb.missouri.edu/stat/reports/industry.htm
As for golf course, surveys by the Golf Course Superintendents
Association of America (GCSAA) say that the average golf course has
111.5 acres under turf management, 70% of it irrigated. They control
on average another 100 acres of wildlife habitat that are freshwater
bodies (found on 78.8 percent of golf courses), deciduous woodlands
(67.9 percent), wetlands (51.9 percent) and streams/rivers (48.9
percent).
3. FERTILIZER USE
------------------
A company called Kline Group has conducted regular studies of golf
courses, sports facilities and turf farms to answer each of your
questions on fertilizer, herbicide and pesticide use -- including
suppliers. A copy of the "Professional Market for Pesticides &
Fertilizers," (July 2001) is $26,000:
http://www.mindbranch.com/catalog/print_product_page.jsp?code=R379-0009
The 2002 report is now being offered in advance of its preparation at
$50,000:
http://www.klinegroup.com/studies/ag/brochures/x45q/brochure.pdf
The question is: what do we know from publicly available Internet
sources?
* The STAT program at Missouri says that all facility managers use
more than one type of nitrogen fertilizer (soluble, slow-release,
specialty and organic). Sulfur-coated urea (SCU) is the most-widely
used slow-release source, according to the University of Missouri
study.
* Neither The Fertilizer Institute nor the UN's Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) have good numbers for golf courses and parks. They
identify everything outside agriculture as "other" and it accounted
for 27.4% of fertilizer production in 1999 or 14.6 million tons of
fertilizer and 6 million tons of nutrients. FAO and Gallup
organization studies indicate that homeowners may account for 75% of
the "other" category -- leaving the balance for parks, turf farms,
golf courses, sports facilities, nurseries, etc.
* The USGA ran an article in June, 1994 on best practices at
Minnesota Valley CC, where they were reducing fertilizer use to as low
as 44 oz per acre. This produces a very low number of only 300 pounds
per year for the typical golf course. Given the heavy fertilization
of greens (every 2 weeks at many courses), it seems to be low number
even just for fairway use:
www.usga.org/green/environment/minn_valley.html
None of the following websites seem to have good data on fertilizer
use either:
The U.S. Golf Association (USGA), though they are continuing to
conduct research and have a live proposal for a research contract
"Call for 2002 Preprosal":
http://www.usga.org/green/research/preproposals/2002/
Professional Grounds Management Society has a specific program on
meeting federal regulations:
http://www.pgms.org
Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (GCSAA) does a
report on fertilizer and pesticide usage each year. "2000 Pesticide
and Fertilizer Usage" is $4,000:
http://staging.n2biz.com:2240/opp_kit/reports.html
Sports Turf Managers Association:
http://www.sportsturfmanager.com/my/shared/home.jsp
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
www.epa.gov
4. LEGISLATIVE ISSUES
-----------------------
Many of the regulatory issues are state and local, intended to prevent
runoff and algae bloom in local waters. The issue is important enough
that it appears often in U.N. reports on U.S. fresh and coastal
waters. In one FAO report, it notes that 22% of U.S. wells are
contaminated with nitrogen.
A Google search that follows this strategy yields links to a range of
state (and Canadian province) and local regulations:
fertilizer + turf + regulations
As a result, there's active discussion of dealing with runoff in
publications by trade organizations:
"A Different Look at Integrated Pond Management" (Sept/Oct, 1990)
USGA discussion of best practices in pond management and fertilizer:
http://www.usga.org/green/download/current_issues/environment/different_look.html
"Nitrogen and Phosphorus Fate When Applied to Turfgrass" (Jan/Feb.,
1995)
Good discussion of environmental issues; good references:
www.usga.org/green/download/green_section_programs/
nitrogen_phosphorus.html
The Professional Grounds Management Society has a specific program on
meeting federal regulations:
http://www.pgms.org/pgmspublications.htm
The U.S. EPA's website turns up a variety of links for golf courses
when using it's search capability -- unfortunately every one of the
top 10 are dead. I used Google's site search to find some of the most
useful. They include:
Potential Drinking Water Contaminant Index (Aug. 23, 2002):
http://www.epa.gov/OGWDW/swp/vcontam3.html
Results from participation in the Audubon Sanctuary Cooperative
Program are reported here on the EPA website "Audubon International's
2000 Strategy" (Aug, 2002), which notes:
66% had reduced fertilizer use;
84% had increased the percentage of slow-release fertilizers;
78% had increased the use natural organic fertilizers
http://www.epa.gov/oppbppd1/PESP/strategies/2000/audubon00.htm
GOOGLE SEARCH STRATEGY
----------------------
We started out simply with the following to identify the major
professional organizations tracking the industry:
"turf management"
"turf maintenance"
Failing to find much on actual fertilizer use, we moved into
government agency sites and fertilizer industry groups, then used
Google's advanced features to search the site itself for references
to:
"golf courses"
fertilizer
"fertilizer consumption"
You've seen most of the agencies listed above, with the possible
exception of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency:
www.epa.gov
FURTHER INFORMATION
--------------------
There still are some fruitful places to look for information -- your
familiarity with suppliers may suggest several companies' web pages,
where often market share information can be found.
Also, there are at least 20 major turf management programs, largely at
the land grant universities, and there was not time to examine
resources at all of them.
Best regards,
Omnivorous-GA |
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