Measuring BMP's Effectiveness

On Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) announced a joint project that will study and measure the water quality improvements that are actually achieved from farmers' use of conservation practices. Working together, the NRCS and the USGS will measure and quantify the benefits of voluntary agricultural practices known as best management practices or BMPs.

In Virginia the local Soil and Water Conservation Districts help implement BMPs through the Virginia Cost-Share Programs that are used as an incentive for farmers to implement BMPs. (Full disclosure: I volunteer and am Treasurer at the Prince William Soil and Water Conservation District.) The Conservation Districts provide free technical assistance to property owners that include developing conservation plans for agriculture properties, state cost share money to help pay for installing BMPs from 100% for stream exclusion fencing down to $35/acre for cover crops. The majority of BMPs have a 75% of the cost reimbursed by the Conservation Districts and the remaining 25% paid for by the farmer can be claimed as a tax credit. The Conservation Districts help farmers implement and pay for environmentally sound agricultural practices and verify that the BMPs are installed and maintained. There has long been a need for real world measurement of the effectiveness of BMPs on the watershed.

Nutrient runoff, nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment, carried by rainwater and snowmelt impacts many of our nation’s waterways including the Mississippi Delta and the Chesapeake Bay. These pollutants, released from waste water treatment plants, agricultural operations, urban and suburban runoff, septic systems and other sources, cause algae blooms that consume oxygen and create dead zones where fish and shellfish cannot survive. In Virginia and the other Chesapeake Bay states BMPs are an extremely important component of the plans for restoring the Chesapeake Bay. Measuring the water quality benefits of BMPs will allow the proper allocation of time and money to the most effective conservation practices.

Nutrient and sediment pollutants that do not come out of a stormwater pipe or waste water treatment plant pipe are washed into the rivers and streams by rain and snowmelt, and the accepted way to reduce this kind of pollution is to implement agriculture and urban best management practices. Agricultural BMPs minimize the use of fertilizers and pesticides to achieve a desired level of performance and quality of crops and pastures while protecting the environment. BMPs are also designed to reduce runoff and soil erosion and benefit water quality while maintaining or even enhancing agricultural production.

Now, the USGS will use the Natural Resources Conservation Service database generated and maintained by the state programs on conservation practices and installed BMPs at private farms combined with water monitoring to understand how well these BMPs perform overtime on a watershed scale. Ultimately the USGS will incorporate this information into its surface water quality models, which track how rivers receive and transport nutrients from natural and human sources to downstream reservoirs and estuaries. This will provide crucial information for funding and operating voluntary nutrient management strategies and programs, and provide information for watershed planning.

The partnership between USGS and NRCS was announced at the Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force Meeting. The NRCS stated that they will protect the privacy of individual farmers and only plan to use the data to evaluate the effectiveness of the installed BMPs. The data can be used for designing better nutrient management plans, which are likely to be required when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency extends their reach to the next level either directly or indirectly.

When hundreds of farms take action in one watershed, it can make a significant difference reducing nutrient pollution and hopefully helping to prevent algae blooms downstream. “This agreement will allow NRCS and USGS to combine resource management capabilities with science, and will give us the information we need to prioritize the most effective conservation strategies so that we can improve the quality of streams throughout the Mississippi River Basin,” said Lori Caramanian, deputy assistant secretary for Water and Science at the Department of the Interior the home of the USGS.

The NRCS and USGS will develop conservation intensity data sets that reflect the value of BMPs in terms of improved water quality, but do not reveal private information about individual farms, ranches or forests. The private information of farmers participating in these conservation programs is protected by law and maintaining the trust among the NRCS, the Conservation Districts and the farmers is vital to the continued success of voluntary conservation on private lands. Models that the USGS will develop will allow our Conservation District to have accurate information on the effectiveness of the BPMs and enable us to use our funding to obtain the biggest improvements in water quality.

Nutrient runoff from many different sources, including urban areas and industry, impacts our nation’s waterways. By providing science-based information, NRCS and USGS can help farmers decrease nutrient runoff and improve water quality for their own communities and downstream communities and environments. Close to one-quarter of land in the Chesapeake Bay watershed is devoted to agricultural production. According the Chesapeake Bay Foundation the largest source of pollution to the Bay comes from agricultural runoff, which contributes roughly 40% of the nitrogen and 50% of the phosphorus entering the Chesapeake Bay. So to meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandated a contamination limit called the TMDL (total maximum daily load for nutrient contamination and sediment) to restore the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia and the other states will have to implement BMPs on the majority of agricultural lands and the data from USGS/NRCS program can help us implement the most cost effective strategies as widely as possible.

The Farm Bill and Hunger in America

from USDA

Food and agriculture and farm policy in the United States is complicated. I believe that we as a nation should be able to feed ourselves and ensure that all Americans have food security. Though agriculture represents only 1.2% of gross domestic product (GDP) the U.S. Department of Agriculture manages a budget of $145 billion (in 2012) about 4% of the Federal expenditures funded and managed under a series of five-year farm bills. In 2012 over $107 billion of the $145 billion Department of Agriculture budget went to the food stamp program (officially called the supplemental nutritional assistance program, SNAP). In 2014 due to an improving economy that is projected to fall to 72%. The food stamp program in its modern form was created in 1964 to address hunger in America. Yet, there is still food insecurity in the United States and it is unclear if the Farm Bill is achieving its stated and unstated goals.

from CBO

Once, the United States was an agricultural nation, it was settled and built by farmers. That is no longer true, but the Farm Bill a more than 1,000 page colossus has its roots in our history. Though the federal government dabbled in farm and water policy to settle the west the era of permanent government participation in agriculture truly began with the Agricultural marketing Act in 1929 that created the Federal Farm Board to stabilize prices. As a result of World War I and the Russian Revolution which created a tremendous demand for food, food exports from the United States and the real inflation adjusted) prices for food soared in the 1920’s, but then collapsed as European and Russian agriculture returned to production and farm yield increases and expansion of acres under cultivation produced massive farm crop surpluses.

In the 1930’s the Great Depression followed by a severe and extended drought caused widespread hardship in rural America. The demand (in America and for export) for crops and livestock fell and then the drought hit. Millions of acres that had been plowed up to grow crops were dry and barren. The native vegetation that had historically held the soil in place during droughts was gone. The Great Plains of America experienced massive erosion characterized by dust storms that reached the east coast. This devastation caused the most significant migration in American history out of the mid-west. At the time the United States was predominately an agricultural nation and in response Congress passed a series of bills on soil conservation, crop insurance, farm price supports and nutrition assistance. In the 1930’s farm policy was characterized by attempts to fix prices or quantities of food grown or improve the rural economy. All of which pretty much failed. Subsequent attempts at managing the agricultural sector saw no greater success.

Nonetheless, every five years with changing goals and details Congress has managed to pass a new farm bill. The ability to pass the Farm Bill is due mostly due to the coalition created by including nutritional assistance in the farm bill. The various farm bills generally cover five areas:

• Loans. Farmers borrow funds from the government using their future harvest as collateral. The farm bill specifies the rates on the loans and if the market price is below the loan rate, farmers deliver the crop in lieu of payment.
• Commodity Payments. There are several types of payments given to farmers to provide income support. These tend to be for grains and commodities not fruits and vegetables and are paid based on historical production. These payments are made to the farmers who receive them whether or not the crops are grown. There are also price support payments that come into play if market prices are below target prices in the legislation. 
• Conservation Reserve Allocation. The Farm Bill authorizes a certain number of acres of farmland that can be taken out of production and put to conservation purposes for a period of 10 years. Landowners are paid annually for these fallow acres. Eligible lands are generally degraded or fragile lands and the program is intended to protect the soil from erosion and the streams from herbicide, pesticide, fertilizer and soil laden runoff. 
• Crop insurance. In recent farm bills crop insurance has become more important. The government subsidizes the cost of insurance to protect farmers from the risks of weather and price fluctuations. 
• Supplemental Nutrition Assistance. Food stamps provide financial assistance to poor families. In 2012 47 million people received food stamps. Though in its earliest form the government handed out the excess food bought from farmers, today the program is financial providing up to $167 per month per person. 

Farm policy after World War II focused on a series of legislative actions aimed at increasing farmer income, providing a food safety net for the poor and investing in infrastructure for rural America. The result of farm policies from the end of World War II until 1970 was the creation of massive grain surpluses that the government bought under the farm loan program. In 1962 the U.S. government held wheat stocks that equaled 80% of the world’s wheat production that year (Cuellar, Lazarus, Falcon and Naylor 2014). These wheat stores were used for food aid shipments during the 1960’s; by 1980 the surpluses had largely disappeared due to changes both in the world market for grains and loan prices for grains.

In each generation of congress the Farm Bill has changed and morphed. The historical favoring of grain crops impacted the make-up of the American diet. These days food stamps and the nutritional assistance programs represent 70-75% of the $145 billion budget. Payment to farmers in the form of direct payments, deficiency payments from the loan program and insurance payments account for about 13% of the budget. Conservation programs account for about 7% and all other programs account for 6% of the budget. Some of these agricultural other programs are really important to the future of food in America, but also tucked into the budget of the Department of Agriculture are a portion of the government support for the crop-based bio-fuels ($320 million) and funding for Climate Centers. The small amount of funding for biofuels belies its impact. Biofuels and the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) created under the Energy policy Act of 2005 have had a profound impact on agriculture in America and the costs of the farm programs.

Since passage of the Renewable Fuels Standard corn acreage in the United States increased by almost 30%, replacing other crops and removing land from the conservation reserves program. Corn prices rose from $2.42 to almost $7 a bushel in 2012; however, last week the price of corn has fallen to about $3.35 a bushel. The USDA is predicting a 14.03 billion bushel corn crop this year, despite farmers planting fewer acres this year than last. Perfect weather is producing a bumper crop and the demand for corn is down. In recent years about 40% or so of the corn crop has gone to the production of ethanol under the RFS. But the Environmental Protection Agency, (EPA) has indicated that they will propose to cut the RFS for 2014. This is a response to the fixed volume of ethanol that is required under the RFS. Annual U.S. gasoline use has declined from its 142-billion-gallon peak in 2007 to about 133 billion gallons in 2012 and ethanol now represents 9.74% of gasoline. There appears to be a practical limit of 10% of ethanol in gasoline.

The food stamp programs provides a safety net for low-income households in times of high or volatile food prices that are often caused by the bio-fuels program and the agricultural programs themselves. It is unclear if the coalition created by combining food stamp programs and farm subsidies can survive in 21st century America where the agricultural economy employs so few. In addition, new “critical” issues are driving our nation’s food policy. Nutrient pollution and algae blooms in our nation’s water supplies, genetically modified organisms, obesity, climate change, immigration are all impacting farm policy. What is clear is that one in six American households is classified as having food insecurity. By this measure our policies have failed. It is inexcusable that there is hunger in America.

from USDA

The Dead Zone

For the past few decades dead zones have become a yearly occurrence. Dead zones form in summers when higher temperatures reduce the oxygen holding capacity of the water, the air is still and especially in years of heavy rains that carry excess nutrient pollution from cities and farms. The excess nutrient pollution combined with mild weather encourages the explosive growth of phytoplankton, which is a single-celled algae. While the phytoplankton produces oxygen during photosynthesis, when there is excessive growth of algae the light is chocked out and the algae die and fall below the interface between the warmer fresh water and fall into the colder sea water. The phytoplankton is decomposed by bacteria, which consumes the already depleted oxygen in the lower salt level, leaving dead oysters, clams, fish and crabs in their wake.

In a wedge estuary such as Chesapeake Bay where the layers of fresh and salt water are not well mixed, there are several sources of dissolved oxygen. The most important is the atmosphere. At sea level, air contains about 21% oxygen, while the Bay’s waters contain only a small fraction of a percent. This large difference between the amount of oxygen results in oxygen naturally dissolving into the water. This process is further enhanced by the wind, which mixes the surface of the water. Scientists are just beginning to study the impact of the winds in delivering oxygen to various water layers. The other important sources of oxygen in the water are phytoplankton and aquatic grasses which produce oxygen during photosynthesis, but when they die consume oxygen during decomposition by bacteria. Finally, dissolved oxygen flows into the Bay with the water coming from streams, rivers, and the Atlantic Ocean. http://www.dailypress.com/news/science/dead-rise-blog/dp-scientists-say-wind-reduces-chesapeake-bay-dead-zones-20110725,0,7046457.story?track=rss

Water temperature and total river flow are linked to the size of the summer dead zone. The peak of oxygen depletion typically occurs in July or August. Water temperatures are highest during these months and the days are longest accelerating the growth of phytoplankton that ultimately consumes all the dissolved oxygen. The dead zone is typically gone by November. Cooler air temperatures at this time of year chill the surface waters, while the deeper water remains warm and allows more mixing of the layers during storms. Cooler water also will hold more oxygen. The size and shape of the dead zone is variable from month to month during the summer. Typically, the largest dead zones occur in years with the highest spring snow melts and rains. Though this year may surpass it, 1993 had the largest cumulative spring river flows of the past 22 years and the largest average summer dead zone with an average of 5.2% of the channel.

River flow volume is linked to increased size of the dead zone because the heavy rains and snow melt that create the river flow carry excess nutrients of nitrogen and phosphorus from agriculture, septic systems, overflows from sewage treatment plants and runoff from lawns, gardens and paved surfaces. These nutrients fuel the out of control grow of the phytoplankton that overwhelms the natural system. The decomposing phytoplankton, combined with higher water temperatures, can cause large areas of the deepest parts of the Chesapeake Bay's deep channel which is the ancient Susquehanna riverbed to have little or no oxygen to support marine life.

These excess nutrients are washed from agricultural fields and animal / feed lots as well as from suburban yards. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation has emphasized the importance of agricultural nutrient management plans and the Commonwealth is phasing out the use of phosphorus in ornamental lawns. However, an additional significant contribution to the excess nutrient contamination during storms is from waste water treatment plants and over taxed sewer systems. The sewer system in Baltimore (where the dead zone begins) still overflows with frightening regularity despite a consent order with the EPA signed in 2002. In a single storm in mid March of this year 4.7 million gallons of untreated but diluted sewer water overflowed from city sewer lines. That was just one of many spring storms. The Baltimore public works department is in the 8th year of a $1 billion rehabilitation of the city's aging, leaky sewer system, which won't be finished for several more years. In Washington DC one third of the sewer system is a combined system that is also subject to direct release of sewage during storms and snow melt. Combined sewer systems are sewers that are designed to collect rainwater runoff and domestic sewage, and industrial wastewater in the same pipe. http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/home.cfm?program_id=5
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2011-03-14/features/bs-gr-sewage-overflows-20110314_1_overflows-sewer-lines-jones-falls

The combined efforts of state and local governments with conservation organizations have made much progress since 1978 in improving the health of the Bay, but are still short of the regional goal. According to the indices created by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, The Chesapeake Bay Program and Chesapeake EcoCheck, there has been little if any progress in the past decade in the health of the estuary. The size of this summer’s dead zone puts a big exclamation point on the work that still needs to be done to restore the health of the Chesapeake Bay estuary. http://stateofthecoast.noaa.gov/hypoxia/dead_zone.html

The Chesapeake Bay is not the only estuary with a dead zone. Dead zones have become common summer events caused by man, human waste, and the waste and excess nutrients from agriculture necessary to feed us and ornamental gardens to please us. It has be predicted by Researchers from Texas A&M University that the Gulf of Mexico dead zone currently estimated at 3,300 square miles will exceed the typical summer average of 5,600 square miles. The scientists are predicting more than 9,400 square miles of dead zone in the coastal waters of the estuary due to the record flooding in the Mississippi valley that flooded fields and towns up and down the river during the spring carrying with the flood waters the excess nutrients from farms, yards, septic systems and sewage treatment plants in its wake. The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone is not expected to peak until late August.