WOOSTER, OHIO — Water quality and food safety were among the topics discussed when Ohio Department of Agriculture Director David Daniels visited Wayne County to celebrate Ag Week in Ohio.
Water quality and nutrient management is a concern to livestock producers and crop farmers, alike. Daniels discussed the status of House Bill 61 and Senate Bill 1 which deal with water quality issues in Lake Erie. The legislation, which has passed the House and is in the Senate, would ban the application of manure and fertilizers to frozen and snow-covered grounds.
That means farmers would need to expand their manure storage and handling capacity, which could cost from $1,000 to $1,400 per cow. The bills would require an expansion in services ranging from engineers to concrete companies and custom applicators since there would be increased need for manure handling, and getting it onto the fields in a shortened window.
At present, the bills only apply to the western basin of Lake Erie, but farmers are predicting the ban will eventually apply statewide.
"There is more than sufficient legislation already in place for CAFOs" Daniels said. "We don’t want to muddy that part of the regulation process, the larger farms are where they need to be."
Daniels said smaller farms fall under the ODNR and the Ohio EPA pollution abatement programs, so there is some concern about how a manure ban would affect the area’s large population of Amish farmers.
Many of the farms range in size from 35 to 50 cows. They do not have a lot of storage area for manure, and they rely on small manure spreaders that can be pulled with horses. Changes in the legislation would move these farms to ODA so they would have one place to go for their nutrient management issues.
Farmers requested Daniels to look at possible funding to help educate farmers about the new rules and to offset the cost for manure storage structures. But Daniels said he wants to first be sure of what the new law contains.
"I don’t even know what the bill looks like yet, so I don’t know how much funding to ask for," Daniels said.
He added that he has talked with Gov. John Kasich about making the rules statewide; so far the decision has been to work in the western basin.
He said the rules being put together still allow farmers to apply nutrients under certain exceptions and emergencies, as long as they follow NRCS nutrient standards under a comprehensive nutrient management plan.
Daniels reminded farmers that they have not been asked to begin construction on new structures for nutrient management.
He said their goal is to ask farmers to look at their operation and management practices and see if there is a way they can do a better job of applying nutrients on their farms.
The farmers in attendance expressed their concerns that there is more to the nutrient issue than just agriculture, and Daniels agreed. He said the Ohio EPA knows that municipal and septic systems contribute to the problem – a fact that doesn’t always get media attention. The EPA is working with those entities to improve their systems.
Daniels said Kasich recognizes that this is a multi-industry issue, and everyone owns a piece of it.
In the area of food safety, produce growers are concerned about the language in the soon-to-be-implemented Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) legislation, according to Fred Finney, a Wooster area fruit and produce grower. The FDA spent the past few years defining the rules and how they will be enforced. Finney said he is concerned about how FSMA will be implemented in Ohio.
Daniels said the program is still being finalized but the rules are expected to be approved in October.
He added that members of his department have been meeting with their counterparts from other states because they are also concerned about FSMA, but he thinks the EPA is changing its philosophy; they want to educate before they regulate.
Daniels predicts the program will be rolled out in stages once the rules are completed and funding is in place. The federal government is setting aside funds for the states to use to cover the cost of inspectors and their training. But he predicts that the new program will be an adjustment for both the ODA and for Ohio farmers.
"Probably for the first time, we’re going to be on a lot of farms that we’ve never been on before and it concerns us as a department," Daniels said.
