No proof PMT will cut phosphorus to Bay

By BILL EDWARDS

This letter is in reference to a letter to the editor by Jeffery Horstman titled “No industry has the right to pollute” in the Dec. 5 edition of The Star Democrat.

First, Mr. Horstman you are correct. No industry has the right to pollute. But to insinuate that farmers have been and are continuing to intentionally pollute our rivers and the Bay is outright wrong and disgusting. Farmers have complied with every law and regulation that the state has created in regards to not only crop nutrients but also pesticides. Because we have implemented these rules and regulations and voluntarily installed many Best Management Practices (BMP) on our farms we have already achieved 130 percent of our TMDL goals for the Bay. We have to attend mandatory training classes every year in order to be certified (licensed) to purchase and use pesticides and crop nutrients (chicken manure is an organic crop nutrient in case you didn’t know).

Second, Mr. Horstman you refer to chicken manure as manure pollution several times and talk about fields containing excess chicken manure in your letter. Neither of these references is correct. For many years now farmers have had to operate with state mandated Nutrient Management Plans. These plans, which are required to be written annually by state certified planners, use soil test results paid for by farmers, to determine what type and how much of each crop nutrient can be used to grow the current year’s crop. By crop nutrient I mean Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) and Potash (K). The Nutrient Management Plan specifies exactly how many pounds of each of these nutrients can be applied per field, per crop. We are audited to insure we are following the requirements of our Nutrient Management Plans. In order to use chicken manure as a crop nutrient, the farmer must first have the manure tested to indicate how much N, P and K the manure contains. These figures are then used in the Nutrient Management Plan to indicate to the farmer how much chicken manure he can apply to a specific crop. Once the manure is applied to the field it then must be incorporated into the soil within 48 hours. Now Mr. Horstman, with farmers following all of these required regulations and procedures how dare you accuse farmers of intentionally causing manure pollution and having fields containing excess chicken manure. It is absolutely not true.

Thirdly Mr. Horstman, you accuse us of being selfish. Selfish for protesting about the expensive and unworkable rules Gov. O’Malley wanted to ram down our throats. We were not asked for input to the PMT but instead were told this is what you are going to do. Several years ago Gov. O’Malley, through the Maryland Department of the Environment, forced many of the farmers who are also chicken producers to pay thousands of dollars for Comprehensive Nutrient Management Plans. These mandatory plans did next to nothing to help in the effort to clean up the Bay. Now along comes the PMT, which in essence seeks to prohibit the use of an organic crop nutrient, chicken manure. Ask the certified organic farmers how much they like this PMT, because they too must abide by it.

This much touted PMT uses a complicated mathematical formula to replace the current Phosphorus Site Index that is used in our Nutrient Management Plans to determine how much phosphorus can be used for a particular crop on a particular field. Using the PMT will cause the farmers in the three lower Eastern Shore counties to spend an additional $22.5 million over a six-year period. Along with this expense the state is estimated to spend an additional $39 million over that six-year period. This is only in those three counties. The PMT is a statewide plan that addresses all types of manure, not just chicken manure, so no one knows what the real estimated costs of this PMT are.

One last thing Mr. Horstman, Maryland Department of Agriculture staff, who approved and put forth this PMT, admit that there is no scientific evidence to indicate how much, if any, phosphorus will be eliminated from reaching the Bay as a result of it.

Bill Edwards is a rancher and farmer. He writes from Hurlock.