Protected Harvest: Creating a Market Incentive to Pay Farmers for Conservation
Posted: 09-Oct-2007; Updated: 10-Oct-2007
One thing is clear when figuring out how to pay farmers for their conservation efforts. You'd be hard pressed to find a farmer who wouldn't rather be rewarded through the marketplace than have to seek assistance from a cost share or incentive program. Although agricultural conservation assistance programs offered by agencies such as the Natural Resources Conservation Service give technical and financial assistance that's vital to private land conservation goals, it’s a win-win situation if farmers can avoid the hassle of applying and instead be rewarded through the marketplace for producing their products in environmentally beneficial ways.
Environmental Defense is a partner in a new initiative in the Chesapeake Bay region to do just that for dairy farmers. Led by Protected Harvest, a nonprofit, third party certifying organization, this project will introduce a model collaborative process for a market-based approach to addressing conservation challenges on farms, and in particular water quality. The resulting dairy certification program will help dairy farmers reduce nutrient runoff to rivers and streams that lead to the Chesapeake Bay. The two most dairy-intensive areas in the Bay watershed—Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia—will receive special attention.
The Protected Harvest program offers a new approach to improving Chesapeake Bay water quality. Dairy farmers who produce their products in environmentally beneficial ways will be rewarded through the marketplace.
(Photo: Brian Palmer/iStockphoto)
First, key local experts and stakeholders—producers, processors, Cooperative Extensions, academics, nonprofits and other local experts—develop the standards and certification program themselves. This collaborative process ensures that the standard is locally acceptable, achievable for farmers and environmentally rigorous. Marketing is a critical component of the project: the goal is to create a label that gets a premium price for milk from dairies that become certified. Consumers then pay the premium for certified milk, not only rewarding certified dairy producers, but also creating a marketplace incentive for more farmers to implement the practices and management approaches and also become certified.
The envisioned result is a sustainable, market-driven approach that will generate significant nutrient and sediment load reductions to Chesapeake Bay tributaries. As well as furthering nutrient reduction on farms in Lancaster and Rockingham Counties, this initiative will be highly adaptable and transferable to the dairy industry in other watersheds and states.
Protected Harvest is well-positioned to establish this premium market. Since its 2001 founding, the organization has developed standards for over a dozen commodities—creating certification programs and distinctive market labels for potatoes, wine grapes, citrus fruit, apples and stone fruit—and certified more than 20,000 acres of agricultural lands.
Suzy Friedman
Project Manager—Agricultural Projects
Center for Conservation Incentives
Environmental Defense
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