About three years ago, AFT’s work to improve the strategic impact of environmental incentives led to a report that highlighted the remarkable potential of ecosystem service markets as a way to fund both environmental improvements and farmland protection. Following up on that work, we proposed and supported the passage of legislation in Washington (SB 6805) which authorized a study of the potential for such markets to help save farms and improve the environment. We then convened the region’s top farm leaders in a major regional workshop/listening session to assess their interest and request their input on how these markets could work for agriculture. We researched these markets and identified models that illustrate the many active and potential markets that are already in place both here and in various places around the country. And, we have been working with regulators to help them develop permitting rules for air and water quality, wetland and habitat mitigation, water resources, and renewable energy that would make it possible for farmers and ranchers to sell environmental services to supply the growing need.

Just recently, we published a new and first-of-its-kind “Guide to Environmental Markets for Farmers and Ranchers,” which explains how farmers can supplement their income and protect their farms by producing and selling environmental services—transactions that are good not just for the farmer, but also for the rest of us. This guide along with our reports and research on environmental markets for agriculture, notices of upcoming workshops, presentations and public events, and some of the written materials we’ve prepared on how these markets can be so critical to directly protecting farmland are all currently online at www.farmland.org/environmentalmarkets.

In the months ahead, we will be using these materials to continue our work and encourage these markets with farmers and ranchers and also with the public utilities, developers, businesses, transportation agencies and regulators whose engagement is needed. We are working to clarify and define the performance baselines that are required if these markets are to work and be credible. And we are advancing pilot efforts to create “farmer conservation cooperatives” that can help farmers create and sell properly certified environmental credits.

About the author: Don Stuart is the Pacific Northwest Director for American Farmland Trust. His work to build coalitions between farmers and conservationists has contributed to key progress in Washington, including the formation of a state Office of Farmland Preservation, creation of the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program’s Farmland Protection Program, and funding for a landmark study of conservation markets and agriculture.

Our new Guide to Environmental Markets for Farmers and Ranchers explains how producers can sell environmental services generated on their farms while continuing their normal farming operations.

Click for PDF of Guide

The guide explains the current status of these markets and opportunities that exist for farmers and ranchers — what these markets can be worth, what must be done to sell services, and who is buying. It also provides practical guidance on how to participate, along with a comprehensive list of potential buyers, informational websites, other literature, and key government agencies for those interested in learning more.  The guide is focused on Washington State, but can be applicable for farmers and ranchers across the country.

Often considered a new idea with puzzling details, markets for environmental benefits have been operating in the United States for many years.  However, recent developments have increased their potential as sources of on-farm income.  This is big news since most active farms and ranches are already preserving and generating environmental benefits. Now, with environmental markets, it is possible to buy and sell these benefits in the form of credits generated from such environmental activities as restoring wetlands, improving water quality or storing carbon.

Typically, farm landowners will be able to take advantage of these markets without removing land from agriculture. In those instances where land may be required to produce credits that could otherwise be devoted to growing crops or raising livestock, this guide suggests ways to minimize that result. And it highlights opportunities to generate environmental market credits that can be produced side-by-side with traditional agricultural practices, rather than circumstances where farms and ranches are taken out of production for environmental restoration — resulting in a vibrant agriculture economy alongside a healthy ecosystem, not one or the other.

If you are in the Washington area, join us this November for one of our six evening workshops across the state to help explain how to use these markets—either as a way to earn extra income or as a new source of funding for land stewardship projects. The workshops are designed for farmers and ranchers, conservation district staff and supervisors, NRCS personnel, Extension staff, land stewardship professionals and anyone else who is interested. Each workshop participant will receive a printed copy of the new guide and the opportunity to get answers to questions about specific project possibilities that might be able to secure funding from these new sources.

Regardless of where you are, please do explore our Guide to Environmental Markets for Farmers and Ranchers and familiarize yourself with this exciting opportunity for farmers and ranchers.

About the author:  Don Stuart is the Pacific Northwest Director for American Farmland Trust.

Washington’s Yakima Valley, a terrain of rugged hillsides and golden desert, is one of the top wine regions in the country. With an ideal climate for grapes and well-drained soils deposited by prehistoric floods, the valley is home to a third of the state’s vineyards. But the region’s many growers of wine and juice grapes face a formidable foe: the climbing cutworm. The nocturnal insect lives in vineyard soil, crawling from the ground in early spring. “The cutworm prefers to climb up the trunk and eat the buds that are swelling on the grape vine. Then the fruit’s gone,” explains Rick Hamman, viticulturist for Hogue Ranches and Mercer Estate Winery in Prosser, Washington.

Previously, Yakima Valley grape growers dealt with the cutworm threat by spraying an organophosphate insecticide that ended up killing beneficial insects while only minimally controlling cutworms. But then entomologist Doug Walsh from Washington State University in Prosser—a recipient of a research grant from the Environmental Protection Agency and American Farmland Trust—hit upon a better solution. His research team figured out they could apply a more environmentally friendly insecticide in a highly targeted fashion that avoided impacts to beneficial insects. By spraying only a banded area of the vine’s trunk rather than the entire vineyard canopy, cutworms were discouraged from climbing and destroying the fruit.

“The growers started using this solution, and it was a real cost savings to them,” says Walsh. “The grower response within two years was universal. At this point I think every grower around here has adopted this practice in some form.”

The innovation is saving Washington growers about $5.5 million a year and has reduced insecticide use by 84 percent, according to WSU researchers. “This has been great and has really helped us,” says Hamman. “It is a total success story. Doug nailed it. You can’t just sit back and do the same old thing. You’ve got to try something new.”

Click here to support funding for this and similar projects utilizing Integrated Pest Management.

On the outskirts of Wenatchee, a city in the heart of central Washington where golden hills surround endless miles of irrigated fruit orchards, a large apple-shaped sign reads, “Apple Capital of the World.” In a region that ships over 100 million boxes of apples a year around the nation and the world, education has been the key to helping growers—especially the valley’s many Latino orchard employees and managers—reduce their use of pesticides.

Apple and cherry grower Jesus Limón, who worked his way up the ranks at a fruit company in order to purchase his own Wenatchee Valley orchard, participated in a Latino orchard employee education program—funded by an EPA grant administered by American Farmland Trust—that teaches growers in Spanish about integrated pest management (IPM).

“You get hooked on it,” Limon says about the natural techniques for identifying and eliminating orchard pests. Since the 1970s, researchers have been exploring safer and more ecologically sound ways to manage pests like insects and plant diseases. IPM includes sustainable methods such as scouting for pests, weather monitoring, disruptions to a pest’s life cycle, and ways to reinforce a pest’s natural enemies.

The Wenatchee-region IPM classes—taught initially by pest management consultant Naná Simone and then by Leo Garcia and other IPM experts at Wenatchee Valley College—were integral in helping Limón reduce the use of pesticides in his orchard, which he then converted to 100 percent organic over a three-year period. “Knowledge is the best thing you can acquire,” Limón says. “The classes helped me tremendously because I couldn’t depend on the conventional sprays anymore.”

Limón’s conversion of his orchard to organic had a domino effect on the farms around him. “This guy just became organic and then the next guy and next guy,” Limón says, pointing to neighboring apple orchards. The program’s classes were such a success not only because the Spanish language instruction helped growers understand the complexities of IPM more quickly, but also because they were taught right in the student’s orchards and fit around the schedule of the farmers.

 “This is a much better way to get people to change,” Limón says. “This program got us away from [conventional chemicals] without forcing us. Trying to work with the farmer is better than being the mean guy on the block. If the EPA knew what this program really did for us, they would do more programs like it.”

Limón proudly points to wooden hawk boxes he installed on poles lining the rows of his apple trees. After two years, he finally got a family of hawks to move into his orchard. The hawks scare away birds that like to peck apples and cherries off the trees. This natural approach to managing wildlife is also an outgrowth of learning about IPM, Limón says. “I liked learning about how the bug populations worked. Once you start putting the pieces together, you see everything: the mice, the snakes, the cougars.”