Farm bill aims to end agricultural pollution

Environmentalists lobbied Congress for years to put millions of dollars into the national Farm Bill to help clean up the Chesapeake Bay. After all, they argued, the biggest source of nutrient and sediment pollution in the Bay today is agriculture.

Finally, those efforts have paid off: Virginia received nearly $7 million this year, the most of any state near the Bay, to assist farmers who want to implement greener land practices.

However, spreading the word that the money has actually arrived from Washington is proving tricky, officials say, especially after so many years of false starts and faded promises.

At the Chesapeake office of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, for example, no aid applications had been submitted by local farmers as of late last month.

"A lot of people might not have heard about it or read about it," said Robert Williams, the Chesapeake district conservationist. "It's hard for us to sell it, but we're trying to get the word out."

Since January, a total of $23 million in federal farm aid has been distributed to six states, from New York to Virginia, as part of a $188 million commitment to the Bay through 2012.

Environmentalists and officials describe the funding as the largest cash infusion ever for agricultural conservation in a single watershed - the Chesapeake.

Ken Carter, assistant state conservationist for the NRCS, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said information will go out soon to thousands of Virginia farmers within the Bay watershed. That area stretches from the Eastern Shore to the Blue Ridge.

Under the 2008 Farm Bill, though, those who grow crops or raise livestock in the Shenandoah and Potomac river basins will be given priority for funding. Still, Carter said, plenty should be available to farmers elsewhere, including in Hampton Roads and on the Eastern Shore.

"I'd expect us to start approving applications in late March or so," Carter said. "Obviously we're very pleased to be offering this assistance; it's been a long time coming and represents a major investment."

The money, however, is not free. Instead, it is a "cost-share," Carter explained, meaning participating farmers must agree to pay for part of the environmentally sensitive practices they deploy.

There are six practices being shopped: planting winter cover crops, employing nutrient management, planting streamside buffers, using conservation tillage, rotating crops and conserving undeveloped farmland.

Carter said winter cover crops are especially important and likely to receive federal aid.

The idea is simple: Instead of leaving a field exposed during winter months, when heavy rains can wash soil and fertilizers into the Bay, plant wheat, barley, rye or some other crop.

Rye, especially, is a "good nitrogen scavenger," soaking up excessive nitrogen and mud that otherwise can flood into the Bay, Carter said.

Once there, nitrogen can cause algae blooms and mud clouds water quality and smothers bottom-dwelling plants and habitat. Algae blooms rob oxygen from water and create "dead zones," where aquatic life has trouble surviving.

In passing the Farm Bill over objections from then-President George W. Bush, Congress authorized $43 million for Bay states in 2010, $72 million in 2011 and $50 million in 2012.

Congress still must approve spending the money each year.

Which means environmental groups still will be trudging to Capitol Hill each year during budget time, asking for Bay money.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com