Report links farmers, the bay

The Baltimore Sun

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation says the agricultural community is on the front lines of the fight against global warming and needs to do more.

Farmers across the bay watershed and their political leaders have only implemented a fraction of the "conservation agriculture" practices needed to reduce the flow of nutrients into the bay, said Beth McGee, the bay foundation's senior water quality scientist.

By committing to do more, and providing the money needed to make it happen, bay area farmers and their leaders can also help slow the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, she said.

"Farmers have shown a willingness," she continued, "but some of [those practices] cost money. We're pushing at the state and local levels to provide more resources, both technological and financial, to farmers."

The Annapolis-based environmental group issued a report yesterday, linking goals in the fight to clean up the bay to those of curbing global warming.

"It could be truly catastrophic if we fail to act now," said foundation President Will Baker.

In a report called Climate Change and the Chesapeake Bay, the foundation said, "Climate change adds new challenges to an ecosystem already stressed by pollutants, population growth and increasing development."

Rising sea levels and warming air and water temperatures are threatening the watershed's ecosystem and the people who live and work around it, the foundation argues in the report.

"But the situation is not without hope: Personal and public commitment, existing knowledge and new technologies can change the tide," the authors add.

The organization wants increased use of "conservation agriculture" - practices such as low-till or no-till farming, and increased planting of winter cover crops and waterside grasses and trees. These reduce the flow of nutrients into the bay, capture atmospheric carbon and store it in soil and plant tissues.

Yale University researchers have calculated that adoption of such techniques across the watershed could remove at least 4.8 million metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year through "carbon sequestration."

That is equivalent to garaging 786,000 Hummers driven 12,000 miles a year, the report said.

Although many farmers have adopted such conservation techniques, others are waiting for further governmental subsidies to help them meet the added costs.

"Farmers are willing to pay part of the costs, but they can't shoulder the entire cost," McGee said.

A farm bill now before the House of Representatives earmarks an additional $150 million to offset costs of conservation agriculture practices in the Chesapeake watershed over five years, McGee said.

"We're fighting to keep it there," and to have a similar provision put in the Senate version, she said.

In addition, the bay foundation report urges reduced use of fertilizer, improved manure management, precision livestock feeding and minimized use of fuel-burning farm machinery.

But that alone won't be enough, the report says.

Two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions that accelerate global warming come from transportation, commercial building operations and residential energy consumption. That means any plan to tackle global warming and save the bay will have to address all these emissions sources, the organization argues.

The CBF paper points out that the Chesapeake is already under assault from global warming. "You can already look around the bay area and see the effects," said McGee.

Rising temperatures are degrading water quality in the bay and its inland tributaries, threatening valuable species, such as the bay's rockfish and Pennsylvania's brook trout. They need cold water to survive and reproduce.

Warmer water also holds less dissolved oxygen, the report said. That contributes to the expansion and duration of oxygen-poor "dead" zones in the deeper, cooler portions of the bay - areas vital to some species' survival.

At the same time, rising air and water temperatures worldwide are expanding water in the oceans, pushing sea levels higher - somewhere between 8 inches and 2 feet by the end of this century, according to recent studies.

It is eroding bay islands and marshlands faster than they can build up new sediments and recover. The Blackwater Wildlife Refuge is losing about 150 acres of marshland each year.

Heavily populated and low-lying areas along the bay's 11,000-mile shoreline, such as Annapolis and Baltimore, face serious disruptions as sea levels rise and storms like Tropical Storm Isabel in 2003 bring high water.

"Hundreds of thousands of people in the Chesapeake region could fall victim to serious floods, and these storms are likely to cause the most damage to socially vulnerable populations within the region," the report states.

frank.roylance@baltsun.com

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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