Water Stewardship

Programs: During fy 2015 water stewardship inc (wsi) expanded its program and is working on more than 90 additional farms to assess best management practice conservation efforts and develop continuous improvement plans for farms in va (shenandoah valley, eastern shore and tidewater regions). Overall participating farmers had already implemented a large number of bmps and the large out-of-pocket costs and time spent by farmers to implement additional bmps during projects illustrates that further gains are likely to be difficult. This was found for work conducted in linking local food systems with water quality as well as on a range of farm types, both livestock and cropping farms. Wsi continued to provide independent policy advice as requested and commenced work on two international water quality projects. Water stewardship completed three major projects; 1) scaling up continuous improvement plans for different regions of virginia; 2) creating a culture of conservation from farm to table; 3) a comparison of new and old maryland site indices and similar indices from adjoining chesapeake bay watershed states. Major findings included that farmers without livestock have fewer options than livestock producers to reduce water quality impacts without taking land out of production or cropping system changes. Livestock farmers who participated in projects had already implemented a large number of best-management practices prior to the project and the large out-of-pocket costs and time spent by farmers to implement additional bmps during the project illustrates that further gains are likely to be difficult. Greater emphasis on both the financial and non-financial aspects of practice adoption is needed if voluntary adoption at a scale sufficient to achieve virginia's phase ii watershed implementation plan is to be accomplished. Overall, reducing soil phosphorus remains a very large challenge for both farmers and policy makers.