Agriculture

Bay Program partners are working with farmers to help reduce the amount of pollution coming from the Chesapeake watershed's approximately 9 million acres of agricultural lands. Through state tributary strategies, farmers are implementing nutrient management plans and dozens of conservation practices, such as cover crops and forested buffers. Increased use of conservation practices in daily agricultural operations is helping our stewards of the land become stewards of the Bay.

Current Restoration Goal

Since 1985, Bay Program partners achieved the following progress toward goals to reduce nutrients and sediment from agricultural lands:

• 48 percent of the nitrogen reduction goal.
• 51 percent of the phosphorus reduction goal.
• 48 percent of the sediment reduction goal.

In part because they are so cost-effective, the Bay states are relying on future pollution reductions from agricultural lands for more than half of the remaining nutrient reductions needed to meet restoration goals.

Through implementation of the states' tributary strategies—clean-up plans for each tributary in the watershed—the Bay Program expects that 52 percent of the agricultural nitrogen goal and 77 percent of the agricultural phosphorus goal will be achieved between 2005 and 2010. Federal, state and non-governmental organizations are lending financial, technical and regulatory resources to support their implementation.

Agricultural Conservation Practices

As part of their tributary strategies, Bay states are implementing nutrient management plans and key conservation practice (also known as best management practices or BMPs). Some conservation practices are voluntary or incentive-based, while others—such as nutrient management planning for all agricultural operations in Maryland—are mandatory.

Nutrient Management Planning

A nutrient management plan is a written, site-specific plan that helps to protect water quality from nutrient pollution while optimizing crop production and farm profits. Even with the best nutrient management plans, there will still be some amount of nutrients contributed to the environment; however, it should be less than what would be contributed without a management plan.

Nutrient management plans are tailored to each specific site, but generally contain:

• Soil information for a particular field or operation.
• A field's crop yield potential and the total plant nutrient needs to achieve this yield.
• Recommended application rates for manure or commercial fertilizers, based on the amount of nutrients to be applied and nutrient carryover from previous applications and crop rotations.

Cover Crops

Cover crops, which are planted in the fall after the autumn harvest, usually consist of cereal grains like wheat, rye and barley that grow throughout the winter. Once established, cover crops absorb excess nutrients in the soil and help prevent soil erosion, protecting water quality and aquatic health.

In addition to the benefits to Bay health, cover crops also help farmers by retaining nutrients for future crop needs, reducing soil compaction and increasing organic matter in the soil. They also help block out noxious weeds and can inhibit weed seeds from germinating.

Animal Manure and Poultry Litter

There are multiple solutions for reducing nutrient loads from animal manure and poultry litter, which contribute about half of the Bay watershed's agricultural nutrients. In addition to nutrient management plans, Bay states have committed in their tributary strategies to reduce nutrients from manure and litter by:

• Properly applying manure and litter to cropland.
• Developing animal waste storage systems.
• Restricting animals from streams.
• Relocating livestock facilities away from streams.
• Transporting excess manure and litter to areas in need.

The Bay Program's 2005 Manure Management Strategy identified four opportunities to better manage manure nutrients in the Bay watershed.

• Adjust animal diets to reduce surplus nutrients in animal manure and poultry litter.
• Foster alternative uses for animal manure and poultry litter nutrients by building markets and technologies for manure and litter products that can be used for energy, fertilizers, soil amendments or compost on a variety of lands.
• Develop a comprehensive inventory of manure and litter nutrient surpluses in the watershed.
• Coordinate manure management programs throughout the watershed to address regional imbalances of manure and poultry litter surpluses.

Vegetative Buffers

Grass and forested buffers planted at the edge of farm fields and livestock pastures adjacent to streams and rivers reduce the amount of pollutants that are able to make their way into Bay tributaries. Trees and other vegetation stabilize stream banks, as well as slow and absorb polluted runoff that would otherwise flow off fields and into local waterways.

Conservation Tillage

Conservation tillage is any tillage planting system that leaves a minimum of 30 percent of the field surface soil covered with crop residue or vegetation throughout the year. By reducing tillage or leaving the soil undisturbed, fields are less prone to erosion. No-till and minimum-till farming are forms of conservation tillage.