St. Paul, MN: The Minnesota Department of Agriculture
(MDA) has teamed up with the National Weather Service to design a tool that
helps farmers and commercial applicators determine the best time to apply
manure.
The Runoff Risk Advisory Forecast tool uses past and
predicted National Weather Service weather data like precipitation,
temperature, and snow melt. It predicts the likelihood that applied manure will
run off fields in daily, next day, and 72 hour increments. Farmers and
commercial applicators use an interactive map to locate their field and find
the forecasted risk. Users can also signup for email or text messages for their
county that alert them to a severe runoff risk for that day.
“By providing this information, we hope to give our
farmers and commercial manure applicators the tools they need to make
well-informed decisions,” said Agriculture Commissioner Dave Frederickson. “By
being able to better predict times of high runoff risk, we can decrease the
potential loss of manure to our waterways and increase farm productivity by
saving nutrients on the land. It is a win-win situation based on an easy-to-use
tool."
When someone goes to the interactive map, the runoff risk
is displayed in one of four categories: no runoff expected, low, moderate, and
severe. When the risk is moderate or severe, it is recommended that the
applicator evaluate the situation to determine if there are other locations or
later dates when the manure application could take place.
The
forecasting tool can also be used by others looking for climate information
including 2” soil depth temperatures which are useful at planting time, and 6”
soil depth temperatures which are helpful when determining fall fertilizer
application in appropriate areas.
The Minnesota Runoff Risk Advisory Forecast is part of a
larger federal project. The National Weather Service has provided data and
guidance to states to create similar tools in Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
State funding for the project was provided by the Clean Water, Land, and Legacy
Amendment.
