Who Should Join

Is the Small Farm Environmental Partnership Project for you?

Do you own a small scale or “Hobby” Farm – good stewardship is important for everyone, notably small scale farmers. Using the best management practices can protect the environment and increase your farms profits along with improving the health and well-being of your animals. The first step is to evaluate your farm. Then by adopting management practices suited to it, you can protect your investments as well as the environment.

If you want to learn more about developing Biodiversity and Environmental Plans for your Hobby Farm please contact BBEMA to learn about this program.

What can the project do for you? – Environmental Farm Plan Support – nutrient management – water chemistry – hedgerow enhancement – native wildlife and pollinator enhancement – invasive species management

Why should you become involved? Environmentally friendly farming practices are not only beneficial to the environment but they can also provide an economic benefit to the farmer. Practices such as proper pasture rotation can increase the productivity of a small acreage; decrease soil erosion and reduce the parasite loads of your animals.

Tree planting increases biodiversity, creates habitat, provides a potential biofuel, can create wind breaks and act as a barrier for odor control among many other wide ranging effects.

Nutrient Management not only applies to synthetic fertilizer application but also to proper manure storage. Over application of fertilizer can lead to an increase cost of fuel, create leakage into both surface and  ground water and as we all know fertilizer and time are money well wasted when over applied.