Thanks for keeping this on everyone’s radar! Not only do we want a public hearing, but more importantly, we want AELR to hold the regulation. Here are our points of why we think the PMT regulation should be put on hold by the AELR committee:
- As pointed out in the PMT Economic Impact Study, the cost of implementing the PMT in public funds will be $39 million over 6 years. Of the $39 million, $15.5 million is new funding that is currently not budgeted and would be the next administration’s responsibility to find funds to pay for it. This new funding would most likely come at the expense of proven nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment reduction practices such as the Cover Crop program.
- The Economic Impact Study was not able to determine the added improvement in Phosphorus reduction over and above the Phosphorus Site Index that is currently being used by farmers in their Nutrient Management Plans to control Phosphorus application. Because of this, there is no way to determine if the cost of implementing the PMT is actually viable when compared to other science based tools that are currently coming online and being discovered. MFB believes that there is new and emerging technology being researched and commercialized that will more effectively address Phosphorus in the bay region, without putting farmers out of business. We need to have the limited public funds available to implement these tools versus wasting them on a PMT that most likely won’t address the Phosphorus issue in the Bay.
- Based on Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay current milestone, Maryland agriculture is at 130% of where it needs to be at this time when looking at the 2025 goal for cleaning up the bay. Why implement a tool that will be devastating to a major sector of Maryland Agriculture when Maryland Ag is already 30% ahead of where is needs to be?
- By holding the regulation, this will allow the next administration (the administration that will have to pay for the regulation implementation) the proper amount of time to determine whether full implementation of the regulation is the correct call for Maryland or if there is a better solution.
Feel free to use these talking points if/when you plan to contact the AELR committee.
Colby Ferguson
Director of Government Relations
Maryland Farm Bureau
2 comments:
Tell MD elected officials to make the chicken companies pick up the manure when they pick up the chickens.....make the Tyson's and Perdue's take care of it....they make enough money off of the environment already!
MD. Politicians are the manure problem.
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