Why don't farmers implement certain best management practices (BMP) on their farms? For those who are not farmers, it may seem obvious going onto a farm that a certain BMP should be implemented. The farmer may even agree with you but yet there is no plan to implement that BMP on the farm. The biggest reason BMPs are not implemented is the economy. Farmers have no money to spare so even if there is cost sharing available there just aren't the matching funds from the farm perspective to make the BMP go forward. Everyone has been hit by the overall economic crisis, but farmers were hit especially hard with low milk prices that will take many years to recover from. In short, most farms are in survival mode and extras are just not going to happen. Unfortunately there is no good solution to this issue until the milk price and the overall economy improve.
The other reason I see why farmers don't implement a specific BMP on their farm is that they don't know what to do. With limited funds they don't know what BMP would be most beneficial to them, and they may not be aware that some BMPs are actually required. For example, farms in Pennsylvania have been required to have a conservation plan and a manure management plan since the 70's but there are many farmers that do not know that they are required to have these two plans on file. If we want farmers to improve nutrient management and soil conservation on their farm we need to be very specific about what they need to do.
Many nutrient management, water quality, and general environmentally minded folks get frustrated at times that farmers aren’t as engaged in these issues as they would like or don’t implement changes on the farm at the pace they would like. Why is that? Well, it boils down to what is your priority. If you work in the environmental field and live and breathe water quality and air quality all day you begin to believe that it is the most important thing, which rightly you should. If environmental quality is your field it makes sense that air and water quality are top priorities for you and you may tend to assume that they should be for others.
Farmers, on the other hand, do care about water and air quality and other environmental concerns, but that is not their entire job so it is not their priority issue. Farmers actually have very complicated jobs with a lot of things pulling them in many different directions. Farmers are raising, large numbers of animals. Even a 40-cow dairy, which is small in the dairy world, is a daunting task when you think about actually taking care of 40 animals plus the 20 calves and heifers that would also be on that farm. I work in the dairy industry and I know I would be overwhelmed with all they have to deal with. Cows get sick and need to be treated, maybe they need help calving, they need extra care and attention after calving even if everything went well, they need to be fed multiple times a day, they need to have access to water, they need to be milked at least twice a day, their housing and stalls need to be maintained daily so that they are comfortable, and the list could go on and on.
Just dealing with the needs of the cows is a lot of work, but farmers also need to provide food for these animals, and in many cases that means growing the corn, soybeans, and hay that will be fed to the cows. Good quality feed is necessary to have high levels of milk production, which is necessary for a farm to make money and continue in the business. That means fields need to be planted and fertilized in a timely manner, hay needs to be chopped multiple times throughout the year and timed so that it has time to dry before getting rained on, and crops need to be harvested a precise times and stored properly so that there is little loss of this precious feed through the year.
All of these animal care and feed production activities take a lot of time and deserve the attention of the farmer. These are, and should be, their priorities if they want to remain in the dairy business. Although many farmers do care a great deal about the environment it just doesn’t make it to the top of the priority list very often. Therefore, for someone working in the environmental field to gain the attention of the farmer and get them to really implement a strategy on their farm you need to show them how it will impact their bottom line and/or improve the health of their animals or the quality of the feeds they are growing. If it doesn’t benefit the dairy operation in some way it will never reach the top of the priority list even though it is on the list.
eXtension is a website that was developed within the last 5 years and is turning into a great resources on a number of issues. All the material on the website is peer reviewed and comes from reputable research institutions and extension professionals so it can be trusted. It has information on the following general topic areas:
Community - master gardening and entrepreneurship
Disaster Issues - floods, oil spill, wildfires, and agrosecurity
Energy - farm and home
Family - child care, food and fitness, care giving, food safety, parenting, and personal finance
Farm - manure management, bee health, beef cattle, dairy cattle, corn and soybean production, cotton, goats, horses, organic, and small meat processors
Pest Management
Youth
Hidden under the "manure management" sub-section of the "Farm" tab is a great page on environmental regulations related to livestock and poultry operations. This explains both water and air quality regulations that are enforced at the national level. There are many state and local regulations that farmers will also need to follow which aren't discussed on this page, but it is still a great resource for the national laws. On other pages is a dearth of information on environmental tools and management strategies that can be employed on varies types of farms.
After almost of a month of no rain we finally got some much needed precipitation here in Lancaster County. Unfortunately we got 3-4 inches in a span of a few days, which under traditional cropping strategies could have made for a very muddy situation not only on land, but also in the local waterways. However, because so many farmers have adopted no-till farming practices the fields were able to absorb this water preventing the local streams from becoming that familiar muddy color. In this area around 50% of land is in no-till production, which is a great tribute to farmer's concern for local water quality. There are many other states that cannot boast such a high number of no-till acres. The benefit to no-till is that there is residue from last year's crop still covering the top of the soil. This residue inhibits the flow of water allowing more it to be absorbed into the soil instead of running off into local streams. Excessive runoff from a field, which could have easily happened during this rain event, can carry with it nutrients and sediment that will then contaminate local waterways. Also, because the water had a better opportunity to be absorbed into the soil the plants will benefit from this rain for weeks to come.
The above video was taken by Jeff Graybill, Agronomy Educator in Lancaster County, of shallow manure injection into a no-till field of corn. This is new technology being tested on a corn field in Southeast Pennsylvania. If the rain stops corn will be planted on this field soon.
Normally on no-till fields manure has to be broadcast so as not to disrupt the soil, but broadcasting manure results in a significant loss of nitrogen from the manure into the air as ammonia. Injecting manure into the soil is a better option to avoid the loss of nitrogen to the air, but normal injection works up the soil and increases the risk for sediment loss.
It sill be interesting to see how the subsequent corn crop reacts to this type of application. I'll keep you posted as the season progresses.
Below is a nice article written in the Lancaster Intelligencier/New Era newspaper that talks about a project that I am lucky to be involved with. Penn State received a grant and that money was matched by other sources to fund whatever is needed to improve the water quality in an agriculturally impaired watershed. At the most basic level this is a huge experiment to see what works and what progress can be made when all available resources are concentrated in a small area. This will be a huge learning process for everyone involved in the project, and the goal is not only to just clean up this particular watershed, but to take those lessons learned to other watersheds and hopefully clean up those as well.
Actual article:
Local watershed may be key to saving Chesapeake Bay
Conewago effort to serve as model
By AD CRABLE, Staff Writer
The Conewago Creek watershed — a sparsely populated but heavily farmed area at the junction of Lancaster, Dauphin and Lebanon counties — is being put in a big test tube.
A unique grass-roots cleanup strategy being tried here, if successful, may become a model for how to clean streams across five states and make meaningful strides in restoring the Chesapeake Bay.
And, not so coincidentally, it night help Pennsylvania farmers avoid crackdowns and residents prevent hits in the pocketbook.
President Barack Obama has issued an executive order calling for stronger action to clean up the bay. LancasterCounty is in the cross hairs.
As part of that accelerated marching order, Conewago Creek, with its two-dozen tributaries, has been tabbed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as Pennsylvania's "discovery watershed."
The watershed covers three townships in northwestern LancasterCounty.
Two similar experiments will be tried in Maryland and Virginia, but only the Conewago is under way.
Initial funding for the three-year project totals $1.5 million, but more is expected to be funneled into the effort as it gathers steam.
An ambitious grass-roots watershed group has joined forces with local officials, PennState and a gaggle of federal and state agencies to attempt a from-the-bottom-up approach.
At least 15 entities are aboard the public-private partnership, known as the Conewago Creek Collaborative Conservation Initiative. Together, they'll try to restore an entire watershed, not by edict or mandatory regulations, but with a voluntary communitywide plan.
The hope is that communities will be infused with a sense of shared responsibility and roll up their sleeves.
The diversity of partners means the technical advice, manpower, money and rapport with landowners are already aboard.
The partners will be working with a nod toward what's happened with Lititz Run. There, WarwickTownship officials, farmers, residents and groups such as the Donegal Chapter of Trout Unlimited have made huge progress in restoring the stream.
"We don't have to reinvent the wheel. We have to take what happened in WarwickTownship and transfer it to the Conewago," Kristen Saacke Blunk, director of PennState's Agriculture and EnvironmentCenter and head of the Conewago project, said.
SouthLondonderryTownship in LebanonCounty already has begun rallying the troops.
"We welcome this involvement," township supervisor Rugh Henderson said. The township formed an environmental advisory council to encourage residents to make their properties, regardless of size, better able to store water and reduce fertilizers and pesticides.
"We have two dozen natural areas. We have wildflower gardens. We're ready," Henderson said.
To that end, the Conewago project is holding a seminar for watershed residents and municipal officials on how to protect water quality in backyards. It will be held at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, April 10, at the Lebanon Ag Center on Cornwall Road in Lebanon.
An unprecedented level of monitoring will be deployed in waterways in the Conewago watershed so that even minute improvements in water quality can be shown to each participating landowner, proving they are making a difference.
Gauges will keep close tabs on such vital signs as dissolved oxygen, sediment, phosphorus, nitrogen, flow and water temperature.
Every farmer, each municipality and all 3,000 homeowners will have to want to do something on their land to make it healthier.
As Don McNutt, the Lancaster County Conservation District's administrator, said, "Anybody in the Conewago watershed is part of the problem — and part of the solution.
"Storm water needs to be treated as a resource rather than just blowing it out through pipes into these 24 streams."
Added Mike Hubler of the Dauphin County Conservation District, "It's everybody's watershed, and you have to do it down to the lowest common denominator — and that's the individual landowner."
For the homeowner, perhaps it's plugging a gutter into a barrel to catch rainwater, planting a rain garden or checking to see if the septic tank is working properly.
For township supervisors, it might be pushing for more-than-required storm-water controls with new growth.
"It's got to be a whole community approach to be successful," Blunk said.
"There are going to be things just about anybody can do that can make a difference."
Clearly, much will be expected of farmers.
Perhaps they'll fence off livestock or give up a little ground from crop fields to allow plantings of filtering trees and shrubs along creeks. Or perhaps they'll sign up for a slew of experimental cutting-edge farming techniques that are being freed from laboratories or demonstration plots to be tried here.
Among them are:
• A device that can be used in no-till farming that injects dry manure into the ground, where it won't smell, run off the fields or release ammonia, a greenhouse gas.
• Feed for cattle and poultry that uses less protein so their manure contains less nitrogen.
• Bag digesters, consisting of a cover placed over manure lagoons to capture methane, a greenhouse gas.
In addition, tried-and-true conservation techniques will be pushed, such as buffers of trees and shrubs along streams, crop rotation, cover crops and filter strips.
•••
Conewago Creek, which is the boundary between Lancaster and Dauphin counties, has a watershed that encompasses 53 square miles and 3,000 households.
In LancasterCounty, the creek drains Conoy, West Donegal and MountJoy townships. Elizabethtown gets a large portion of its drinking water from the Conewago.
MountGretna is the only borough within its borders, and the dammed stream forms MountGretnaLake. Many horse farms and stables are located there.
From its headwaters on state game lands near MountGretna, the stream empties into the Susquehanna between Falmouth and Three Mile Island.
Like many streams in the area, Conewago Creek is often laden with farm-related nutrients and muddy from bank erosion and runoff. It floods easily.
And like many waterways here, the stream and many of its 25 tributaries are officially designated as "impaired," meaning they can't support the fish and richness of aquatic life they could if they were healthy.
In a broader picture, the silt and nutrients that the waterways send downstream contribute to the pollution and decline of the Chesapeake Bay, the largest, richest estuary on the continent.
Most of the pollution is caused by runoff from agriculture, which accounts for just over half the land use in the Conewago Creek watershed. But housing developments, leaking septic systems, sewage treatment plants and some industrial uses in the watershed also contribute.
•••
Matt Royer grew up on a chicken farm along Conewago Creek on the DauphinCounty side.
One day, he and his father, Hal Royer, were talking about how the stream's health was clearly declining.
Matt Royer began tacking up broadsides in the area, inviting anyone interested in forming a grass-roots watershed group to show up at a meeting.
Anglers, a biology professor from ElizabethtownCollege, the Milton Hershey Foundation — the largest landowner in the watershed — and lots of interested residents did just that.
The Tri-County Conewago Creek Association was formed in 1992 and hit the ground running. Royer is its president. He also serves as staff attorney for the Pennsylvania office of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and is on the guiding committee for the Conewago project.
The new group obtained a grant and hired consultants to study the watershed extensively and map what it would take to restore it.
Some 129 projects were outlined, and the group marshaled hundreds of volunteers and signed up farmers for four major improvement projects, from planting several thousand trees for stream buffers to performing bank stabilization work.
That ability to get boots on the ground is one reason the Conewago was chosen for a centerpiece project. Another was the manageable size of the watershed and the fact that the 2008 Farm Bill targeted small watersheds to fund conservation measures. A third was PennState's search for a place to try all the research its staff was tinkering with.
"At the end, we hope to be able to say here's how we did it and here's what it takes to make changes daily," Blunk said.
One thrust of PennState's involvement is to help farmers, landowners and communities obtain dollar value for doing the right thing for the environment.
Increasingly, she said, land-use actions that prevent greenhouse gases are being viewed as having monetary value, called carbon credits, and markets are developing to pay those who hold credits.
Getting money should encourage more landowners to adopt conservation measures, she said.
But the trick is measuring the value.
How much value do you attach to a farmer who practices no-till farming or has a flood plain that recharges aquifers? Or to a homeowner who plants wildlife habitat rather than a carpet of grass that needs constant fertilizing?
To help develop the project's one-community goal, an Internet program will be created with a one-stop clearinghouse of information for everyone in the watershed.
"We want to show information to say (that) when you do a practice, here is an outcome that you can expect," Blunk said.
Otherwise, McNutt said, "It's like telling a farmer he needs to lose weight and not being able to tell him what he weighs or what the diet will be."
Officials working on the project admit feeling the pressure to produce. But they're also clearly energized by the fresh approach and the opportunity to try cutting-edge down-on-the-farm conservation practices.
"It is a little daunting, but it is exciting because it's an opportunity to really make this a great place to live," Royer said.
"It's an opportunity to improve the stream and make it a place everyone can continue to live and work in and make sure agriculture is an important part of the watershed."
The Mid-Atlantic region has gotten hammered by, not one, but two major storms in the past week and many are still trying to recover. My dog has loved every minute of it, the rest of us have had to deal with the inconveniences of shoveling and trying to get to work, but dairy farmers have been hit financially by these storms. Dairy producers rely on the milk truck to pick up milk at least every other day if not more often and feed trucks to deliver purchased feeds to their cows. During the past week as many as 300 farms in Lancaster County, and potentially others elsewhere, have had to dump milk because the milk trucks can not get through the roads to pick up the milk. This is a huge financial loss to the farmers, but there can also be environmental concerns related to dumping of the milk. Milk is high in many nutrients, and as much as it is a good food for us it is also a great food for bacteria and other microorganisms in local waterways. This can lead to a depletion of oxygen in the water killing fish and other aquatic organisms. Therefore, farmers are encouraged to try to dump excess milk in manure storage facilities if available. Storage facilities are sure to fill up quickly from snow, manure, and now the milk so many farmers may be forced to spread the milk on the fields. Even spreading might be difficult as gaining access to fields will be a challenge. However, whatever the situation is on the farm dumped milk should be managed appropriately. Set-backs from waterways and wells should be observed and amounts spread should be recorded and accounted for in nutrient application calculations.
Although I try to not get too deep on this blog the link below to a YouTube video is a nice break in an otherwise rough year. The farmer who put together this video has a lot of other links on, and is doing a great job of getting his message out to a new audience. I commend him for taking the time and effort to try to educate folks in a way that will get their attention without being controversial.
Manure Du Jour is a weekly webinar series hosted by the Agriculture and Environment Center at Penn State. Topics include discussions about nutrient management, and reducing the potential for nutrient emissions to air and water. The following is a nice summary of manure application concerns that were addressed during a previous Manure Du Jour webinar.
What environmental challenges are associated with land application of manure? Land application of manure presents both systemic- and short term challenges. Under the current agriculture structure in Pennsylvania in which large quantities of feed are imported, farmers do not have an adequate amount of land to assimilate the sheer volume of nutrients on the farm and balanced cycling of nutrients cannot be achieved. The net result is an over abundance of nutrients in soils, presenting near term and long term challenges for ongoing farm production and a reservoir of nutrients that can move across- and through the soil via surface- and groundwater to local streams and rivers.
What are the benefits of no-till vs. tilled soils? No-till practices offer several benefits to soil health over conventional tilling. • Soil erosion and nutrient loss from erosion is reduced • Soil quality is improved • Biological activity in soil is higher • Soil surface residue is retained However, no-till practices are at odds with the environmental benefits of incorporating spread manure into the soil. Incorporating manure into the soil: • Reduces ammonia volatilization • Reduces runoff of water-soluble phosphorous • Decreases odors.
How can the best of both no-till and manure incorporation be achieved? New technologies have been developed that incorporate manure while still retaining the benefits of no-till practices. These technologies deposit manure into the sub-surface with minimal disruption to the soil and include a shallow disc injector, high pressure manure injector, and aerator with banded manure. Use of these practices can reduce ammonia emissions, odor, and loss of water-soluble phosphorous as well as maintain the soil health associated with no-till practices.
Related Resources View the “Water Quality-Land Application” epi¬sode of Manure Du Jour on the Penn State Agriculture and Environment Web site: aec.cas.psu.edu/news/webinar_archives.asp
No-till farming is when crops are planted in the spring over the residue of the previous years crops with no tilling of the soil. It has been promoted as a way to reduce sediment loss into streams and rivers, and it has been very successful.
However, reducing sediment loss is not the only positive consequence of no-till crop production. Fields under no-till management tend to lose less carbon to the atmosphere compared with fields that are tilled yearly. No-till farming practices also use less fossil fuels and fertilizer compared with traditional tillage.
These carbon sequestration benefits are gaining the attention of law makers as the cap and trade bill moves through congress. The idea behind the cap and trade bill is that if you do something (i.e. no-till farming) that reduces carbon in the atmosphere you earn an offset that can be sold to someone else that either can't, or won't, reduce their own carbon emissions. No-till farming is not the only solution to reduce carbon emissions, but it is one that can benefit both farmers and the environment.
Corn is soon to be chopped for silage and with the wet weather this summer many farmers will experience "juicing" of new silage.Juicing, or leachate, is worse when silage is put up too wet and with the wet summer it will take a long time for corn to dry down. Regardless of the amount of leachate, it needs to be managed to avoid negative environmental impacts. Silage leachate is a serious threat to surface and ground water quality due to its high concentration of nutrients. One gallon of leachate can lower the oxygen content of 10,000 gallons of river water to a level that is difficult for fish to survive.Also, the high ammonia and nitrate concentrations in silage leachate can lead to algae blooms, which can further reduce the oxygen concentration in lakes and streams.Silage leachate is also very acidic and can burn the grass in the surrounding area, increase the acidity of bodies of water, and corrode concrete and metal structures.All farms, regardless of size, are regulated under the water quality laws, which means all farms need to control pollutants (i.e. silage leachate) that runs off their farm into streams and other surface waterways.
Since some silage leachate will occur, it is important that there be a system to divert it away from surface water and well heads.Leachate and any contaminated rain water should be captured and diverted into a lagoon or a filter strip.Leachate that has been collected can be treated to make it less caustic to water resources by dilution with clean water or manure, neutralization with hydrated lime, aeration, and simply storing the material will help to reduce the potency of the leachate.Field application is the best method to dispose of leachate, but care should be taken about when, where, and how it is spread so that damage is not done to the plants in the field or to surrounding environment.
Management practices that help reduce silage leachate also result in better quality corn silage for your cows because leachate contains nutrients like water-soluble carbohydrates, proteins, and vitamins that could be going into your cows instead of the stream. With corn silage being the major component in many rations it is important that care be taken to produce a good quality feed and in the process prevent the potentially negative environmental impact of silage leachate.
Knowing the dry matter concentration of any wet feed is something every producer should know.
Determining the dry matter concentration of wet forages is one of the most basic, and arguably the most important things to measure in wet forages and can be easily done on the farm. The Benefit to measuring the dry matter concentration on farm is that it is quicker than sending it to a lab, and the quicker the ration is adjusted to the new dry matter concentration the more accurate the ration.
Once the dry matter is determined, the ration needs to reflect any changes in the value. For example, if corn silage dry matter changes from 35% dry matter one week to 30% dry matter the next week, but the ration is not adjusted to reflect that change, crude protein concentration of the diet will increase from 15.8% to 16.3%. In this example, the cow will be getting more protein and nitrogen than she needs, and the excess nitrogen will end up in the urine potentially leading to air and water pollution.
Excess nitrogen and phosphorus are major contributors to water quality concerns of the Chesapeake Bay. Conversely, if the dry matter of the corn silage increased from 30% to 35% and the ration is not adjusted the cows will be getting less energy and protein than they should be because increasing the corn silage will dilute out the rest of the ration. This could lead to a decrease in milk production, which is never a good thing.
Formulating rations to the cow’s requirement and then mixing that ration as close as possible to what is on paper is necessary in order to reduce nutrient losses to the environment and maintain a consistent high level of production. This becomes very difficult to do when the dry matter of a large portion of the ration is not known accurately. So get out there and start weekly testing of your feeds!
