Farmers in the Western Lake Erie Basin, which includes parts of Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, can now earn money through a phosphorus load reduction pilot program. The Phosphorus Load-Reduction Stimulation Program (PLUS-UP), coordinated by the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC), will pay farmers in the project area $5-$10 per acre in 2022 to reduce phosphorus loads using practices such as no-till or cover crops.
“The PLUS-UP program will provide a financial incentive for conservation practices that help farmers reduce phosphorus loading in the Lake Erie watershed, keep their nutrients where their crops can use them, and build soil health,” said Hans Kok, CTIC Program Director. “Bayer Crop Science has purchased phosphorus credits to provide these PLUS-UP incentives, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has supported the development of a market mechanism that could be sustainable well into the future.”
CTIC, the Bayer Carbon Program, and Heidelberg University said they will provide support to farmers on sustainable practices through educational materials, workshops, and one-on-one training. PLUS-UP payments now being offered to growers are intended to help offset their costs for the use of in-field practices such as cover crops and no-till, which help reduce the amount of dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP) delivered to the watersheds that drain into Lake Erie.
“What we’ve been learning over time, especially with more recent algal blooms in Lake Erie, is that it seems like the smaller portion of phosphorus, the dissolved phosphorus that you can’t see, plays a critical role in bloom severity because it is way more bioavailable for algae,” said Laura Johnson, Director of the National Center for Water Quality Research at Heidelberg University. “And if we’re thinking of it in an agricultural context, dissolved phosphorus is the farmer’s crop available phosphorus.”
PLUS-UP payments
will be based on Nutrient Tracking Tool (NTT) modeling results for the
practices and conditions for each participating field. According to Johnson’s
research, DRP runoff in the Western Lake Erie Basin averages 0.3 pounds per
acre, while reductions are expected to be in the range of 0.05-0.1 pounds per
acre. Based on those estimates, payments for
practices in the PLUS-UP pilot program will probably be approximately $5 per
acre for cover crops, $3 per acre for no-till, or $10 for both practices
employed together.
The first round of payments will be for practices put in place between the harvest of the 2021 cash crop and planting of the spring 2022 crop. Johnson’s team at Heidelberg University will calculate the reductions for each participating grower using the NTT model and report this to CTIC. The contract will call for payment to be made soon after planting of the 2022 crop.
Interested farmers can find more information and apply for PLUS-UP at https://ctic.org/projects/Sustainable_Supply_Chains/PLUS-UP.