Nutrient Management and the Chesapeake Bay

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States with a very large and diverse watershed. The health of the Bay related to pollution from nutrients and sediment has been in decline for many years. Agriculture in the watershed is one of the major contributors of nutrient and sediment pollution to the Chesapeake. The cause of the nutrient pollution from agriculture has usually been thought to have been the result of mismanagement of nutrients on farms. Consequently, the approaches to solving the problem have focused almost exclusively on changing farm management. As a result, significant progress has been made in improving on-farm nutrient management but the health of the Bay remains a concern. An analysis of the structure of animal agriculture in the Bay watershed reveals that the problem is much deeper than simply mismanagement on farms. A major underlying cause is a regional nutrient imbalance resulting from an economically driven system of animal production based on importing from outside the watershed a large amount of the animal feed. Therefore, a long-term, sustainable solution will require much more than just changing on-farm management. To really solve this problem will require a restructuring of the animal production systems to internalize the environmental costs of this structural imbalance of nutrients in the watershed. The challenge that must be met is how to accomplish this in a way that is sustainable.