BMP Challenge: Helping Farmers Clean Up the Chesapeake Bay

This week, Jim Baird, Mid-Atlantic Director of American Farmland Trust (center, with plaque), donated 945 nutrient credits worth over $4,000 to the Lancaster Farmland Trust, a big step in our long-term goal of helping farmers reduce nutrient run-off into the Chesapeake Bay.  

The credits were generated by three Lancaster County farmers who participated in our Best Management Practices (BMP) Challenge, which helps farmers test fertilizer reductions by insuring any loss of yield that occurs in the process.  The program allows farmers to improve their environmental stewardship, while eliminating the biggest obstacle in their path – loss of profits.

 Jim Baird describes the BMP Challenge:

“The BMP Challenge is an innovative tool that allows farmers to improve their environmental impact on their land without compromising their ability to compete economically. The success of farmers like these who are willing to do their part, in Pennsylvania and other states, demonstrates that you don’t need hard-and-fast regulations to expand agriculture’s role in cleaning up regional waterways-an important fact for everyone to remember as federal agencies develop a new strategy for restoring the health of the Chesapeake Bay and the creeks, streams and rivers that feed it”

By participating in the BMP Challenge these farmers generated nitrogen credits that were certified through the Department of Environmental Protection’s Nutrient Trading Program.  Now, these credits can be purchased by a third party that doesn’t meet it’s water pollution standards, giving farmers an added income stream for their stewardship.

This process has the additional benefit of keeping the land in agriculture, as Karen Martynick, executive director for the Lancaster Farmland Trust, explains:

“We are really excited that American Farmland Trust is engaging farmers through the BMP Challenge in Lancaster County. The nutrient credits generated by the project could provide another source of income for our farmers, and it’s one more piece of the puzzle in preserving agriculture as a way of life in Lancaster County.”

Learn more about American Farmland Trust’s BMP Challenge and about our work helping farmers play an active role in cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.