Nutrient Management Planning

Ed Palmer plans on applying 175 lbs of ammonium nitrate (33-0-0) per acre for spring application (March) on his orchardgrass pasture. Application is done with a spin-type spreader. Given the following information, use the weight area method to determine if the spreader is properly calibrated. Application width = 20 ft. Length of calibration area = 100 ft. The amount of fertilizer in the collection container after Ed has driven over the calibration area at his typical gate setting and driving speed is 8 lbs. 4 oz. How many lbs. per acre is Ed actually spreading?

I swear to goodness, I did not make that up. For the past two weeks, I've been dealing with mono-cropping word problems from hell in a nutrient management planning class that I've been taking. Maryland law dictates that anyone with over 8 animal units (1,000 lbs of animal) or $2,500 gross income from the farm must submit a nutrient management plan. In large part, I think this is a good thing, as it helps protect the Chesapeake Bay from over-application of fertilizers at the agricultural level. Of course it does nothing to address all those homeowners who are over-applying fertilizer and herbicides to have their pretty green lawns.

I fell into the NMP category because I gross—certainly not net—more than $2,500 with CSA sales. So, there I was, sitting in this class to become certified to write my own plan, which will help maintain a certain level of independence by doing it myself. The interesting and not surprising part of it all is that no one quite knew what to do with me. These kinds of things simply aren't written for such a small farm. Over and over again, I'd bump up against issues of scale. The form wanted to know how much poultry I had in units of 1,000 birds; I had .09. It wanted plans for each separate garden/ pasture plot along with acreage. My kitchen garden is 1/16th of an acre; my market garden is a 1/4 acre. It wanted to know how many tons of manure I spread on my gardens; I spread compost by the wheelbarrow full. It had space for just three kinds of animals; I have 7.

Luckily, there were several nice extension agents there who held my hand and shook their heads right along with me as we tried to translate what I do into terms that their software and forms could understand. I will need to start keeping track of my yields per row, using whatever units make sense—probably bushel baskets. Their smallest unit of measurement is 1,000 square feet: about half my kitchen garden, which has a couple dozen crops in it, certainly not a 1,000 sf of any single crop! I was surprised to learn how much poo each animal produces in a year, based on their averages. It's quite a bit, actually, but since most of the year I have the animals spreading it themselves, I'm not collecting, storing, and spreading it, nor am I burning the fossil fuels needed to do so. Of course, I'm not feeding my animals like the large confinement operations either, so there's a good chance that those numbers don't accurately reflect our reality.

But, I've passed my exam and written my plan and can now say that despite the difficulties of scale, I am now in full-compliance with the law.