Farmers Learn How Green Improvements Can Earn Money At Credit Trading Workshops

Over 170 conservation district employees, farmers, engineers, planning commissioners, and other interested individuals participated in nutrient trading seminars in State College and Lancaster co-sponsored by the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, the Pennsylvania Association of Conservation Districts and the Capital Resource Conservation and Development Area Council.

 

Nutrient trading is a way to reduce the overall amount of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorous) and sediment in a stream or river. Similar to emissions trading, regulated dischargers purchase "credits" from off-site locations within the watershed.

 

These off-site locations (often farms) make improvements to their land that reduce the amount of nutrients from their land going into the river. The reductions in nutrients are credits that are sold to the dischargers.

 

The seminars focused on the nutrient trading process for landowners and purchasers, as well as the various ways to generate credits using best management practices such as no-till farming, planting cover crops and, riparian buffers.