Photo courtesy of John Marshall, Soil and Water Conservation District
This stream crossing is an example of a state-funded better-farm management practice, that serves to keep cattle out of the stream.

In effort to cut pollution by 2010, program subsidizes fences, trees to stop farmland waste

by LAUREN FULBRIGHT

When Roberta Jefferies describes the land where she and her family have farmed for generations, she notes that there have recently been some major changes. Fences now cut across what was once acres of open land, and 1,300 newly planted trees and shrubs line the stream that passes through the property.

Jefferies, 64, who lives with her husband on a 140-acre homestead near the town of The Plains in Fauquier County, Va., leases her land to a tenant who runs a small cattle operation.

At the urging of their tenant, the couple recently participated in a state-funded farm management program that helps farmers pay for the expensive land renovations that prevent agricultural runoff from polluting the Chesapeake Bay.

As part of the cost-sharing program, Jefferies received funds that allowed her to add the fences and trees to her property, subdividing the land and keeping the cattle from wandering into the stream. The state also helped fund Fiberglass drinking troughs, to give the cattle an alternative drinking source.

“I think it definitely made a drastic difference in the property,” Jefferies said. “The property is healthier, the stream and everything, hopefully some trees will grow, too.”

Jefferies said that by allowing her tenant to swiftly rotate the cattle, the changes have made the farm easier to manage and the land is now being used to its full potential.

“I’ve been in charge of this place for 30 years, [and] of all the parcels that my family has owned, mine is by far the most efficient,” she said.

Jefferies said she hopes nearby landowners also will make changes because it will take more than just a few people to significantly reduce pollution in the stream.

As the 2010 goal of significantly reducing pollution in the Chesapeake Bay draws closer, state-funded “Better Farm Management Practices” are helping farmers make the changes needed to preserve the bay, but environmentalists and state officials say more funding is needed before these practices can become widespread.

The Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources is trying to get the Legislature to appropriate more funds for farmers, state Assistant Secretary of Natural Resources Jeff Corbin said. Last year, Virginia spent $15 million to help farmers implement better management practices. Corbin said eventually the state will need to be putting in as much as $70 million into the program.

“Even if we had all the money in the world available tomorrow, it’s not that easy to put on the ground,” Corbin said. It’s better to increase funds a little each year until the state can reach its goals, he said.

A multibillion-dollar cleanup of Chesapeake Bay is under way, though officials say the 2010 goal won’t be met.

John Kennedy, director of the Chesapeake Bay Program, a regional partnership between several states, organizations and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said that since the first Chesapeake Bay agreement in 1983, officials have managed to keep pollution from worsening in the bay, but it is still a problem.

“We’ve kind of stabilized the conditions,” said Kennedy. “It’s not getting worse, but it’s not getting better. We’re maintaining the status quo, but we’re in an impaired condition, and the status quo isn’t good enough.”

Pollution in the Bay

“We know that pollution is a major problem with all of our rivers.”

Kennedy said bay pollution comes from many sources, including runoff from urban, forested and agricultural areas. Pollutants also come from wastewater treatment and industrial plants and are deposited through smog from power plants and car tailpipes, he said.

While the state has been successful at reducing pollution from places like wastewater treatment plants, which easily can be regulated, Kennedy said that pollutants like agricultural runoff are much harder to control because they come in from virtually everywhere.

When agricultural fertilizers run off from farms, they over-fertilize the water, causing algae to bloom in mass quantities, Kennedy said. Fish and other filter feeders cannot consume all of it, and the surplus sinks to the bottom, where bacteria eat it and multiply. The bacteria then consume all of the dissolved oxygen in the water, creating dead zones where fish and shellfish can no longer live.

“On the scale of things, the nutrient over-enrichment is the biggest problem we are having in the bay, and the impact that the nutrient enrichment has, is it lowers the dissolved oxygen in the water,” he said.

Agricultural runoff also winds up in rivers, which feed into the bay. In summer 2006, a report from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality found that 9,000 miles of Virginia’s rivers were polluted.

“The more they look, the more polluted rivers they find, which is kind of discouraging, but not that surprising,” said Bill Street, director of the James River Association. “We know that pollution is a major problem with all of our rivers.”

Kristen Hughes, Virginia staff scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to eliminate pollution in the bay, said that from an environmental perspective, the problem is not so much farmers or agricultural waste but the increasing development in one area.

“A well-managed farm is better for the bay than development like suburbs, so it’s important for water quality to keep farmers farming,” she said. “At the same time, the population in the Chesapeake watershed is growing, so as a people, we’re putting more demands on farmers to produce food for us.”

Not enough funding to meet farmers’ demands

“There’s no shortage of farmers who want to participate in these programs. We usually run out of money before we run out of willing farmers.”

Hughes said that every year farmers who want to make changes like those on the Jefferies’s farm are turned away because there isn’t enough money at the federal level to meet the demand.

Corbin, the Virginia official, said the state has helped farmers by implementing cost-sharing programs.

“It’s not as if they are knowingly polluting, it’s simply part of the farming business,” he said. “There’s dozens of different practices that farmers can do and that the state will help [share costs].”

Corbin said the amount of money that farmers receive depends on the project, but the state usually pays 50 to 85 percent of the total cost. Farmers also can often get federal money, which results in them paying next to nothing for improvements to their land, he said.

The state often pays for things like fencing to keep livestock out of streams, Corbin said. Cattle tend to erode the soil and defecate in the streams, harming the watershed, he said.

Corbin said the state also helps with nutrient-management planning, in which a farmer can sit down with the state or a private contractor and plan out how they should use fertilizer, and where and when to put it down.

Lloyd Goode, a conservation specialist at the John Marshall Soil and Water Conservation Department, a farm bureau in Warrenton, Va., said the most difficult part of the program is for farmers to come up with their share of the money. He said that on a working farm, even 25 percent of the cost is sometimes difficult to come by.

While the initial expense is out of pocket, Goode says the changes help the farmer in the long run. Because the cattle gain access to fresher water and are exposed to fewer parasites, they gain weight faster and farmers spend less money on veterinarian bills, he said.

Corbin said the main problem is finding enough funding to go around.

“There’s no shortage of farmers who want to participate in these programs,” he said. “We usually run out of money before we run out of willing farmers.”