by Stephanie Ogburn
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California dairy farmer Joey Rocha. Photo: Stephanie OgburnTurlock, Calif.—Joey Rocha tends 2,800 cows at his Central
Valley dairy. That may sound like a large herd, but in
California, Rocha is a mid-sized dairy producer.
Taken together, California’s dairy cows
produce more than 100,000 tons of manure every day. Rocha and his fellow dairy
farmers put all those cow pies to good use—as fertilizer for the fields that
grow the corn that feeds their herds. It’s a perfect closed-loop system, except
for one big problem: nitrogen.
Manure is nitrogen rich, which makes it a
great fertilizer. But by applying every last bit of manure to their fields,
California dairy farmers—and non-dairy farmers as well—are dosing their crops with
more nitrogen than the plants can absorb. The excess nitrogen is causing
serious air and water pollution problems and may even be threatening the health of
the soil.
There are ways around this problem: dairy
producers and farmers could dial back on the manure and synthetic fertilizers
they apply. But there’s not a lot of incentive to do this.
“[Fertilizers] are, in fact, relatively
cheap and very good insurance,” says Allen Dusault, program director at
Sustainable Conservation, a California group that works with farmers to develop
economically-feasible approaches to environmental practices. “If you’re a farmer
that is applying adequate amounts and then some, it’s good insurance to make
sure you get your yields.”
Perverse incentives
Yields are the driving force of modern agriculture. Whether
a farmer is growing corn to feed his dairy cows or someone else’s, he gets paid
by the ton. If he can apply a little extra of something that is cheap or free
(fertilizer or manure) in order to ensure a high yield, that’s a no-brainer.
Although most agronomists will tell you that farmers
over apply nitrogen and can get the same yields without adding as much
fertilizer and manure as they do, few farmers are willing to take that risk for
an environmental benefit that doesn’t impact them.
Thus, nitrogen pollution from farms is really a kind of market failure: individual farmers have little or no
incentive to act in a way that protects the groundwater beneath them. But the
public does have an interest in clean water; and public action will likely be
required to change the incentive structure.
Reducing risk
Allen Dusault, program director at
Sustainable Conservation,
a California group that works with farmers to develop economically-feasible
approaches to improving environmental practices, has thought a lot about the N
problem. What’s needed, he says, “is a way to insure the financial viability of crop production methods
without creating such a surplus of nitrogen that you have runoff.”
That’s where risk-reduction programs such as the Best
Management Practices (BMP) Challenge come in. The BMP Challenge, a unique
program available in 18 major farming states, allows farmers to try
environmentally-beneficial management techniques by offering to pay them for
any costs they might incur in the process.
The program, originally started by American Farmland Trust and now run by a company called AgFlex, is focused mostly in areas where nitrogen runoff is
causing big problems: the Chesapeake Bay, Mississippi River watershed, the
Great Lakes Region, and now California dairies.
Farmers who enroll in California’s BMP Challenge agree to
apply less manure to their corn, and to try and target that application at
times when the corn will actually absorb most of the nitrogen in the manure. If farmers’
yields dip, the program compensates them for their loss. If their yields increase or hold
steady, farmers pocket the savings from reduced fertilizer use and higher yields.
Rocha was one of the five dairy farmers that Dusault
and Sustainable Conservation first approached in 2009 about taking the BMP Challenge.
“We don’t look for these new programs,” says Rocha, whose environmental
consultant turned him on to the program. “But when stuff comes our way,
we do take a listen to it.”
Next year Sustainable Conservation hopes to enroll about 20
dairy producers in the San Joaquin Valley, according to senior project manager
Ladi Asgill. The program is appealing, says Asgill, because it “offers an
opportunity for dairies to experiment and work out the kinks in implementing a
new practice, where we offer risk coverage, basically.”
Speaking of risk, Rocha did have slightly lower yields this
year. But he also learned a lot about how to time his irrigations and apply
manure more efficiently. With a few years practice, Rocha believes he could get
to the point where he sees “the same [yields] with less [manure].”
Limiting risk is a key component in getting farmers to try
new practices that have favorable environmental results, says Ferd Hoefner,
policy director for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition[4],
a D.C.-based policy group.
“There really is a barrier to adoption of
practices, even practices that on average are great net-return kinds of
practices for farmers,” Hoefner says. “They fear there will be some
kind of cost of production.”
The BMP Challenge gets farmers over the financial hurdle.
For Rocha, it was a “no-fear” option.
“There’s nothing unattractive about it,” he says.
Taking it national
Of course, paying farmers to try new practices can get
expensive. Farm conditions vary and the program has to pony up to pay for yield
reductions. Ideally, says policy analyst Hoefner, the program might work
well as a kind of national insurance policy for farmers willing to try something new.
In Hoefner’s view, modest programs like the BMP Challenge could have a
lot of short-term impact. But when it comes to creating truly sustainable agriculture
systems, Hoefner says his organization would like to see more support for
widespread systemic changes in how dairy farms, and other farming systems,
operate. Such changes would include returning to traditional pasture-based
grazing systems, and exchanging concentrated animal feeding operations such as
Rocha’s for smaller livestock production approaches that integrate animals into
farming systems with techniques such as rotational grazing.
The HDTV Challenge
Rocha didn’t get his usual yields last year, but he’s game to
try the BMP Challenge or some other similar program again.
“If it’s out there next year, if there’s another
program to be had, we’ll take a good hard look at it again,” he says. “If we
wind up with … [a] little less nitrogen, that’s better for us, better for the
ground.”
In the long run, what matters most is the effect that Rocha’s
experiment has on his dairy farming neighbors. If they see him getting more yield
with less manure, they may start doing what he’s doing—and if that happens, the practice of smart nitrogen use could snowball.
Sustainable Conservation’s Dusault calls programs like BMP
Challenge “showcasing,” and likens Rocha to the early adopters who
bought the first HDTVs. (25 percent of American
households had high definition televisions in 2007; 50 percent had them in 2009.)
Manure management isn’t as much fun as watching Peyton Manning
launch a Hail Mary in hi-def, though, and if California dairies follow the same
trend as California farmers who failed to adopt conservation tillage, Dusault’s HDTV penetration model may not apply.
The truth is it’s too early to tell how
effective the BMP Challenge for California’s dairies will be. What is clear is that unless
government steps in to share some risk or change financial incentives, farmers across the country will likely continue overdosing their fields with nitrogen—to the detriment of our ecosystems and our health.
Related Links:
Farmer-consumer group challenges FDA authority to ban interstate raw-milk sales
Corporate farming to trump saving salmon?
USDA releases strict new pasture rules for organic dairy
