Virginia’s varied landscapes mean soil is different as you move across the state.
Rory Maguire is the supervisor of Virginia Tech’s Soil Testing Laboratory. He explained Wednesday morning that different kinds of soil require different kinds of fertilization— each interacting differently with the watershed.
There’s an upside, though.
"There's a lot of overlap between soil health practices and nutrient management," Maguire explained. "Cleaning up the practices that create soil health are also the practices that clean up the Chesapeake Bay. And they're beneficial to farmers as well."
The Department of Environmental Quality is keeping those various needs in mind … and working to address Bay cleanup goals through a pilot program that pays organizations to pull nitrogen and phosphorus out of the environment through new methods.
Nine projects have received $19 million in funding.
One of the participating companies is MOVA Technologies, which is working with poultry houses to capture ammonia produced at the facilities. That ammonia then becomes nitrogen through a biogeochemical process.
Luke Allison is MOVA’s chief advancement officer. He says the company’s goal is to help farmers control the gas and improve production.
Allison says they’re still several years away from the commercial application, but the process today can keep nutrients from filtering into the Bay and potentially causing algae blooms.
"This ammonia that's being created by the chickens, well historically and even today, it just gets blown out and lands in the watershed, uncontrolled. That ammonia is very valuable," Allison said. "So. there’s this huge application. If there’s ammonia being created from different processes, it’s a really important commodity that needs to be capitalized on."
The pilot program and commission meeting come as a draft of the revamped Bay agreement goals is open for public comment through September 1st. A vote on the final revised plan by the Bay commission’s executive council, which includes Governor Glenn Youngkin, is expected by the end of the year
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.