Farmers Still Whining About Bay Model

Study says EPA bay study is way off

American Farm Bureau President Bob Stallman says the EPA’s Chesapeake Bay water quality model is vastly different from the USDA’s and farmers in the watershed “are paying a steep price” because they’re being wrongly blamed for nutrients and sediments in the watershed.

An AFBF news release says the analysis, conducted by LimnoTech and the Agricultural Nutrient Policy Council, shows differences ‘in the areas of land use, total acreage of the Bay watershed and data and assumptions about farmer adoption of conservation and farming practices.’

Stallman says those farmers are incurring “extreme costs” and the EPA and USDA should work together to resolve the key differences. He says everyone wants a clean Chesapeake Bay but the EPA regulations for it are “unlawful.” Stallman says it’s the job of state governments, not the federal government, on these types of regulations.

All models are wrong... The only questions are by how much and in which direction.  You can be sure that the EPA model is weighted in the direction that EPA wants to regulate, and the the USDA model is favors it's constituency, the farmers.  The truth is either somewhere in between, or at right angles (in n-dimensional hyperspace) to those models.