Farmers use nutrient management practices in pasture systems by developing watering sources in each paddock and moving salt/mineral feeders. This prevents livestock from congregating at watering areas and around feeders where they tend to deposit more manure. Moving feeders and waterers into various paddocks helps to disperse the nutrients more evenly across the total pasture system.

Water Quality Management
Water quality is very important to a farmer for raising both livestock and crops. Livestock producers can incorporate a number of best management practices to help prevent soil erosion and manure nutrient runoff into streams. Livestock can be fenced out of streams through stream bank fencing programs. A defined point is developed for livestock to cross over the stream or to drink water from the stream. This area is reinforced to prevent erosion and is known as a stream crossing. Other methods that farmers use to preserve water quality is to develop an area where springs run from a hillside. The water is collected to flow into a trough where the livestock can drink. An over flow in the trough can place extra water back into a stream. Occasionally a farmer may incorporate a storage structure into the spring development. By adding a frost free hydrant, the farmer can then distribute water throughout his pasture system using the spring development as his water source.

Another practice that farmers use to protect water quality is to allow buffer strips between crop land and a water source. This buffer strip may be a grassed area or an area planted with trees. These areas prevent any runoff from the fields from entering the water source.

Terraces are used to also control runoff and erosion. A terrace is a flat area of earth with sloping sides that is situated one above the another along a hillside. They are built into a sloped area to reduce the amount of slope.

On any of the fields you may find crop residues after harvest. These residues from the crop not only slow down runoff, but they also provide additional organic matter for the soil. Cover crops are crops that are typically planted in the fall of the year to provide "cover" on a field for the winter. This reduces soil erosion, captures free nitrogen, and again provides organic matter to improve the soil.

More frequently, farmers use integrated pest management to determine when and if a crop should be sprayed with a pesticide. Farmers will identify and count the number of weeds in a specified area of a field or they may count the numbers of specific insect pests in a specified area. Using an Agronomy Guide, they can determine the "economic threshold" for spraying. This simply compares the number of weeds or insects and the cost of spray materials with the associated reduction in yields. When the weeds, insects, or diseases reach a certain level, then it will be economical to spray to control them.

When spraying, farmers use best management practices. Prior to spraying, farmers will calibrate their sprayer so that the correct amount of pesticide is delivered to each acre. They adjust the pressure on the sprayer to control the droplet size. The larger droplets are less likely to drift away from the intended spray area. Farmers prefer to spray during the early morning hours to minimize the amount of spray drift that might be blown away from the intended spray area.

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