A variety of USDA programs will be tapped to provide $328 million in technical and financial assistance to improve water quality and restore coastal ecosystems over three years on agricultural land in the Gulf of Mexico area, said USDA. The strategy calls for conservation improvements on 3.2 million acres of high-priority land in 200 counties and parishes.
Practices such as cover crops, nutrient management and no-till farming are estimated to reduce runoff of 11 million tons of soil and 2.65 million pounds of nutrients. USDA is working with five Gulf states, federal agencies and landowners in the project.
In a series titled, “Watching our water,” Harvest Public Media asks, “How does pristine water running off of snowpack high in the Rocky Mountains end up as a floating chemical ‘dead zone’ in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico?” The series includes a TV program and radio and online reporting. Crops and livestock are the two largest, but not the only, contributors to nutrient runoff in the Gulf. “It’s really not a simple problem. It’s a relatively complex program,” says water-quality researcher Troy Bauder of Colorado State University in the first of five online reports.