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Planting native, perennial warm season grasses (WSG) is a well established practice for reducing nutrification of waterways, but the economic sacrifice required for traditional buffer plantings has been a significant barrier to the widespread adoption of riparian buffers. Both the act of planting a buffer, and the width of the buffer that is planted, are constrained by economics (perceived/actual loss of income). Traditional methods for planting WSG have been costly and prone to failure sometimes requiring as many as three growing seasons to become established and productive. The resulting loss of on-farm income from fields during the establishment phase has been a major barrier to adoption. Despite these constraints, streamside buffers are a practical and established technique for reducing nutrients reaching streams and groundwater in the Chesapeake Bay Region. Fields in WSG do not require fertilization when harvested for purposes other than forage so fields or buffers converted from row crops to WSG reduce the need for fertilizer within the watershed. Fields managed for forage require a small fraction of the fertilizer generally used in row crop agriculture.
Great progress has been made recently in overcoming the two major barriers to widespread WSG plantings, the technical problems with establishment and lack of markets. FDC Grassland Enterprises has dramatically improved the technology for establishing WSG by reducing establishment time to one year and therefore dramatically reducing opportunity costs on those fields. The Conservation Management Institute has pursued an initiative to establish new markets for WSG since 2004 by overcoming technical hurdles in using WSG as a source of forage, biomass energy feedstock, and most recently as a source of poultry litter. Emerging markets for WSG in the form of carbon credits and nutrient trading credits are on the horizon, but require additional information to become operational. Finally, farmers need good production data for WSG to make an informed economic decision to convert fields to WSG.
We propose an innovative strategy, focused on economically profitable warm-season grass plantings, both in the form of agricultural buffers and as whole-field plantings. This strategy will involve: 1) annual plantings of approximately 2500 acres of WSG in buffers and fields, 2) monitoring the results of a range of WSG management practices, to acquire key information that will be used to adapt management practices and promote economic viability, and 3) providing outreach and demonstration to farmers throughout the watershed on these practices. The planting will be conducted by FDC Grassland Enterprises (Virginia branch) a full-service WSG planting company that has planted in excess of 80,000 acres of WSG in 9 states. Monitoring will be performed by the Conservation Management Institute (CMI) with the objective of obtaining information needed for adaptive management, farmer and industry support, and emerging economic opportunities such as carbon and nutrient trading. Outreach will be conducted by CMI and FDCE Grassland Enterprises at farms throughout the Chesapeake Bay watershed and at one farm (Catawba Farm) managed by CMI dedicated to biomass energy demonstration projects. The ultimate outcomes of this project will be at least 500,000 acres of WSG planted in fields and field borders in the Virginia portion of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed, an estimated reduction of 8.8 million pounds of nitrogen and 711,000 pounds of phosphorous reaching the bay, and an increase in profitability of participating farms totaling an estimated $84.5 million or $169/acre.
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