The presidents of six state farm bureaus asked the USDA to share the cost with farmers of reducing sediment and nutrient runoff into Chesapeake Bay. “We are now at a critical stage in the Chesapeake Bay cleanup,” with a 2025 deadline for reducing pollution, said the farm leaders in a letter.
By 2025, nitrogen runoff must be reduced by an additional 50 million pounds, with 80 percent of the reduction coming from agriculture and forestry. “We are asking that you establish a Chesapeake Bay Resilient Farms Initiative,” wrote the leaders of the Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia farm bureaus. They pointed to a Chesapeake Bay Foundation estimate that $737 million would be needed over 10 years and said the money could flow through USDA cost-share programs.
“The Chesapeake Bay Resilient Farms Initiative is the kind of bold USDA investment plan that will help farmers adopt the conservation practices essential to restoring the Bay and its local rivers and streams,” said the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. It said forested buffer strips along streams and waterways and so-called rotational grazing of livestock would be cost-effective ways to reduce runoff.