NEWS & VIEWS continued...
and manure that comes from those same ani- mals when kept off the fi elds in barns. Water quality testing in years when manure is spread in winter months could easily be compared to water quality tests from years when manure is not spread in winter months. Until such com- parative testing has shown a negative impact from the manure spreading we believe that forcing horse farm owners to truck or stock- pile their manure is bad public policy. Horse farm owners should be allowed to spread ma- nure year-round with reasonable limitations on spreading rates.
Fencing Horses Out of Streams Horses do not wallow in streams any more than deer or other wildlife. Any trail rider will swear to the fact that horses hate putting their feet in mud.
A number of horse farm owners have cal- culated the cost of separating their horses from streams that run through their pastures but that they never enter. T ese tend to be the large farms with the best pastures. T ese are the farms that fertilize the least and are an asset to the waterways that run through them. No-
impact on the environment. We applaud Governor O’Malley’s defense of farmers when we are blamed for pollution and we applaud his work to preserve both farmland and the Chesapeake Bay. We are working hard to sell the Nutrient Management Plan as an ef- fective pasture management tool for horse farm owners. We understand that horses can create erosion and that overgrazing is the real issue that horse farm owners must address if we seek to shrink our environ- mental footprint. Forcing us to
“With the proposed regulations, the scale has tipped so that regulations now require
practices that are contrary to the business of farming and without the site-specifi c planning tools that have proven successful over time.” - Patricia A. Langenfelder, Maryland Farm Bureau President
To read more comments on this topic, or to post your own comment, go to
www.equiery.com and click on any of the following titles:
Farmers are Angry
Spreading the manure & stream fencing: will Maryland horse farm owners become outlaws?
Is MDA hastening the demise of agriculture (and the horse industry) in Maryland?
body believes that fencing these streams out of the pastures will make the water in them any cleaner, but the proposed regulations would force these farm owners to do just that at $8 per foot. One of the best-managed farms in our state had an estimate of $60,000 to fence out its streams, and others in the same county came in at over $100,000. Soil Conservation District staff can tell when animals are causing erosion problems in streams and aff ecting water quality. We support eff orts to address those problems. We do not, however, support a regulation such as the one proposed that arbitrarily states that every farm that has a stream running through a pasture is outside the law.
Conclusion We understand that politics drives policy, and that nonfarmers have made an argument that farm animals are polluting our waterways. T ose well-meaning advocates are demanding that laws be passed to criminalize farm practic- es that have not been shown to have a negative
www.equiery.com | 800-244-9580
fence out streams that our horses never step in and stockpile or truck manure that could im- prove the quality of our soils are both expensive and pointless exercises that discourage farm owners from working with their soil conserva- tion districts and investing in the kinds of best management practices that are known to pre- vent erosion and sediment loss. We join Maryland Farm Bureau and others in the agricultural community in asking that the state of Maryland continue its present eff orts to bring farmers into compliance with the more reason- able Nutrient Management Plan regulations already in eff ect and work with the MHC Farm Stew- ardship Committee to promote BMPs on horse farms and thereby improve our chances of meeting the goals set in all of our county Water- shed Implementation Plans. Please call on the Maryland Horse Council for input on these and other issues that aff ect horse farms.
We are working hard to preserve the land and the jobs that the horse industry maintains in Maryland, and will continue to advocate in good faith with our partners in state govern- ment toward that end.
Farmers Are Angry
by Patricia A. Langenfelder, president of the Maryland Farm Bureau [Editor’s Note: T is letter, addressed to the Sec-
retary of Agriculture, has been edited for length; to view the original letter, please visit
equiery.com.] Maryland Farm Bureau is opposed to the
direction MDA has taken with the nutrient management regulatory changes that were pro- posed on June 29, 2012. T ere was a time when best management practices and nutrient man- agement were carried out in conjunction with farming, to improve the production outcome on individual farms as well as protect the en- vironment. With the proposed regulations, the scale has tipped so that regulations now require practices that are contrary to the business of farming and without the site-specifi c planning
tools that have proven successful over time. Rather than concentrating on growing the best quality, most effi cient crop or livestock they can produce, farmers will now have to spend valuable time managing and moving nu- trients to fi t the chaotic time frame outlined in these “one-size-fi ts-all” regulations. Livestock operators will have to take major portions of their pastures out of production, in- vest in expensive fencing and try to manage many acres of noxious weeds that will grow along the stream banks
in the buff er. Millions of dollars of farmer and taxpayer funds will be spent regardless of the actual consequences to the bay on fencing and manure storage facilities. T e overall level of frustration is high in the farm community. T ey view the series of recent actions by the state as the largest taking of pri- vate property in the last quarter century. Farm- ers are angry and frustrated. Specifi cally, farmers have identifi ed the fol- lowing as they begin to review the regulations: Cost-share funding – T e installation of ad- ditional manure storage facilities and the pro- hibition on spreading should be contingent on funding from the state or USDA/NRCS. Add- ing a few extra months of storage capacity to an existing manure storage structure will cost as much as building the original unit. T e in- vestment will not bring additional income to the farm.
Economic Impact – T e Administration’s Es- timate of Economic Impact as printed in the Maryland Register is incomplete. T ere is no estimated cost for farmers or for the state on the construction of storage structures. T ere is no estimate of the number of acres of farmland that will have to be taken out of production as a result of universal 35-foot buff ers and stream fencing. T ere is no estimate of fi nancial loss to farmers for taking that land out of production. Farmers disagree with the Administration’s economic assumption that “the ensuing rec- ommendations will have a positive impact” on farms. Every farmer who has reviewed the pro- posed regulations has concluded that imple- mentation will cost signifi cantly more than it will ever benefi t the operation. T e Administra- tion’s statement also claims that “current state and federal programs can off set the majority of additional costs incurred by agricultural opera- tions.” However, farmers who have started to analyze changes that will be necessary on their farms as a result of the new requirements have been told there is no funding available when they have approached the state technical assis- tance providers. Additionally, it is claimed several times continued...
SEPTEMBER 2012 | THE EQUIERY | 9
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