Can Agriculture Improve Water Quality? With Data-Driven Voluntary Conservation, the Answer is Yes
By Terry Cosby
All life depends on clean water, and how we manage our land affects surrounding waterbodies. With nearly 40 percent of U.S. land in farms, agriculture offers a major potential to support water quality improvements nationwide.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) delivers science and data, one-on-one technical support and cost share opportunities to ensure this potential is realized.
Here’s how we support agricultural producers and conservation partners in achieving wins for water quality and working lands.
1. We provide strategies to improve cropland nutrient management on a field-by-field basis.
When farmers effectively manage nutrients from commercial fertilizer, manure and other inputs, they minimize the losses of those nutrients from their fields into local waterbodies.
While all crops need nutrients to grow and thrive, effective nutrient management is not one-size-fits-all. NRCS works with farmers to achieve a SMART Nutrient Management Plan.
A SMART Nutrient Management Plan includes the four “Rs” of nutrient stewardship – the right source or type of nutrients, the right method for applying them, the right rate at which they’re applied and the right timing of application – while additionally emphasizing the need for a comprehensive assessment of site-specific conditions.
No two fields have identical histories or plans for production. When farmers work with NRCS to develop a SMART Nutrient Management Plan, our conservationists assess site-specific risks for nutrient and soil loss and offer opportunities to address those risks, all through voluntary measures.
This provides a way to boost crop yields, bottom lines and water quality benefits all at once. In fact, farmers save $30 per acre on average on land currently receiving excess nutrients by implementing a SMART Nutrient Management Plan with NRCS.
2. We build the science base needed to effectively address nutrients across agricultural landscapes.
Managing nutrients as they’re applied is just one step in supporting water quality improvements. While this is vital, we must also understand and address nutrients not previously used by crops. These legacy nutrients may persist for decades in cropland soils and surrounding waterbodies.
Legacy nutrients present a major water quality challenge which can’t be fixed through SMART nutrient management alone.
Improving conservation outcomes requires targeted, data-driven efforts at multiple scales – within fields, beyond the edges of fields and across watersheds – to effectively address both current and legacy nutrient sources.
Our Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) plays a key role here. Through CEAP watershed assessments, NRCS works with producers and partners to quantify the outcomes of voluntary conservation in select watersheds nationwide.
CEAP provides data-driven insights to inform delivery of USDA’s conservation programs and initiatives and the systems of practices we plan with landowners to manage both current and legacy nutrients in-field and beyond.
Our new USDA Legacy Phosphorus Assessment Project highlights a key example of CEAP efforts to advance the science behind legacy nutrient mitigation to support effective conservation strategies.
3. We work one-on-one with farmers, ranchers and forest landowners.
As chief of USDA’s primary private lands conservation agency, I’m regularly in awe of the power of voluntary conservation to deliver lasting results for our natural resources. Farmers, ranchers and forest landowners are among the nation’s most dedicated stewards. At NRCS, we’re here to serve them.
I encourage all producers to connect with the NRCS office at their local USDA Service Center. NRCS staff can visit an operation and share one-on-one technical expertise to meet individual needs.
They may also provide details on our programs, like the Conservation Stewardship Program and Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which deliver cost share to help eligible producers implement systems of NRCS conservation practices.
Producers nationwide are partnering with NRCS to strengthen their working lands and keep waters clean. Together, we will deliver wins for agriculture and water quality through data-driven, voluntary conservation.
Terry Cosby is chief of the NRCS and can be reached by visiting nrcs.usda.gov. This article was originally published by NRCS on Aug. 1.
