Released November 17, 2008

UNIVERSITY PARK, Penn. – Susquehanna County farmer John Benscoter used to plow his fields before planting corn. “I love to plow,” Benscoter said. Then he learned about the no-till method, which involves planting crops without disturbing the soil. He now plants his corn that way. In addition, Benscoter has fenced in the creek running through his farm, keeping livestock from damaging the grasses growing along the bank. These changes have reduced the amount of sediment from his farm that enters the creek—and eventually the Chesapeake Bay. Benscoter is not alone in making changes to cope with soil erosion and other factors affecting water quality on his farm and downstream. Nearly half of the state’s farmers have adopted no-till farming practices, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

Even with such changes, agriculture—a $45 billion industry in Pennsylvania—contributes to water pollution within the state and in the Chesapeake Bay watershed from the runoff of excess nutrients from barnyards and fields. The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States, and its watershed includes the entire District of Columbia and parts of six states—New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.

“Nutrients sound like a good thing. We need them to grow—plants do, people do—but they can also be too much of a good thing,” said Dr. James Shortle, Distinguished Professor of Agricultural and Environmental Economics and director of the Environment and Natural Resources Institute (ENRI) at Penn State.

That’s why Shortle, along with Kristen Saacke Blunk, director of the College of Agricultural Sciences’ new Agriculture and Environment Center (a collaboration between ENRI and Penn State Extension, an Outreach unit), have launched an effort to work with both internal and external partners—state agencies, municipal wastewater treatment plant operators, farmers, regulators, agricultural and environmental nongovernmental organizations, and others—to develop solutions to the problem.

How to Restore the Bay

Removing nutrients-fertilizers, animal manure and sediments-from Pennsylvania and the other states’ waters is key to restoring the Chesapeake Bay. Excess nutrients—primarily nitrogen and phosphorus—are the result of changing agricultural practices. Today animal agriculture is more concentrated, with more animals being raised on a farm and fewer acres being devoted to growing feed. Instead of growing feed, Pennsylvania farmers buy it from the Midwest and no longer have a use for the nutrients their animals produce in the form of manure.

Read the rest of the article at http://www.outreach.psu.edu/news/magazine/CurrentIssue/feature4.php

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http://www.outreach.psu.edu/news/magazine/CurrentIssue/feature4.php