Collection of Information about Farm Management Practices

Researchers need information on best management practices (BMPs) installed by farmers to quantify the effect of BMPs on watershed-scale water quality and to educate farmers on which BMPs are the most suitable to achieve water quality goals. The goal is to provide farmers with educational assistance so they can make informed decisions on BMPs. However, farmers may be unable or unwilling to share the information needed by researchers. Targeting survey efforts to representative farmsteads or study areas is recommended to increase data acquisition success and reliability if assumptions of data transferability are correct. Windshield surveys of crops and review of agency records on cost-shared BMPs are additional ways of supplementing the land use data base to be used in conjunction with monitoring data for model development and verification and evaluation of BMP effectiveness.