Funded by: Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and National Fish and Wildlife Foundation
Stroud Center’s Farm Stewardship Program provides technical and financial assistance to farmers and landowners to implement best management practices (BMPs) to protect water quality and improve stream health. In total, it has assisted 22 farmers to install more than 235 ag BMPs (including 85 acres of forested buffers on 11.3 miles of streambanks). This work leveraged roughly $1.5 million in U.S. Department of Agriculture funds. In addition, the potential for farmers to engage in nutrient trading was also assessed on 231 farms. The intent was to see if income from nutrient trading could motivate and reward installation of ag BMPs. In most cases, work simply brought farmers up to baseline levels of conservation. In a few cases, tradable credits were generated.
Project Years: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016
Project Lead: Matthew J. Ehrhart
Collaborators: Red Barn Consulting, Inc.; TeamAg, Inc.; Berks and Chester County Conservation Districts; multiple land trusts, conservancies, and others
Project details may change over the lifespan of a project. Details listed here are from the annual report of the most recent project year.
