PA farmers 'don't get enough credit' for bay cleanup, says longtime York County farmer

Dan Innerst’s family has been farming their little corner of the world for a long time, six generations toiling in the soil to grow corn, wheat, soybeans and hay and raising beef cattle.

The home farm, off Hess Farm Road, nestled among the rolling hills southwest of Dallastown, is about 150 acres, but the Innerst family farms probably about 1,000 acres total in that part of York County. That may seem like a lot, but Innerst, the fourth generation to work that soil, said, “It’s small nowadays.”

The field above the barn – built in 1838 – climbs a steep hill, green with rows of soybean. It may appear to be too steep to farm effectively, but Innerst said his family has been doing it for nearly 120 years and it’s not a problem. They know how to deal with it, he said.

At the bottom of the hill, on the other side of the barn, is a meadow that slopes gently to the bank of Barshinger Creek, one of two creeks that flow through the farm, the other being the East Branch of the Codorus.

Innerst used to farm that land, right up to the tree line along the creek’s bank. Now it’s covered with grasses and clover and thistle and other plants native to the area, supplying a buffer between the farm and the creek.

On the other side of Hess Farm Road, upstream, the meadow is even more verdant, thick with native plants and grasses and sycamore, maple, dogwood and elderberry. For a small farm, allowing that prime farmland to revert to its natural state comes with a cost. Land that could produce crops and profit lay dormant. And restoring the creek to its natural state was an expensive proposition.

But Innerst thinks it’s worth the expense and effort.

It’s part of his commitment to clean up the streams that flow through his farm, and part of the effort to clean up the Susquehanna River watershed, and part of the effort to restore the Chesapeake Bay, an effort that won his farm a Clean Water Farm Award from the Pennsylvania Chesapeake Bay Program.

Clean water, he said, “has been a priority my whole life.”

He said, “Being as close to the bay as we are, we think about these things a lot. We have to think about the stuff we send downstream. You have to think about it long term. Fifty, a hundred years from now, what am I going to leave for my family?”

'You did a good job and everything worked out'

Farming is tough work.

“In my grandparents’ day,” said Innerst, a 63-year-old barrel-chested, bearded man wearing a Carhartt T-shirt, denim shorts and hiking shoes, “you did a good job, and everything worked out. The risk and rewards are tougher to deal with nowadays.”

Farming involves a wide variety of skills. A farmer, to be successful, must know business and finance, engineering and mechanics, meteorology and climate science, animal husbandry and veterinary science, and, of course, horticulture, among other skills. Innerst is modest about his talents, saying, “It’s fairly involved, but you kind of pick it up as you go.”

But farmers do have to know a lot about a lot of different subjects. And add to that, farmers now have to know about environmental science − a lot.

For at least the past five decades, farmers have had to deal with environmental regulations intended to preserve farmland and protect watersheds from pollution caused by agricultural runoff.

Fertilizers and organic materials from manure used to enrich the soil – nitrogen and phosphorus – flow into streams and, eventually, into the Susquehanna River watershed, eventually pouring into the Chesapeake Bay and causing what can only be described as an environmental disaster. High levels of the elements harm habitats for oysters, crabs and other aquatic critters and have a lethal effect on those who depend on the bay for food and commerce. Oysters are coming back, and so are crabs, but the damage caused by pollution has decimated the bay.

The states surrounding the Chesapeake have committed to restoring the bay, but Pennsylvania has lagged far behind in the effort. That prompted the other bay states, joined by environmental and watermen groups, to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to force the feds to enforce Clean Water Act standards in the commonwealth.

The suit was settled earlier this year with the provision that the EPA would force Pennsylvania to commit more resources to protecting the bay.

Part of the settlement requires the EPA to force Pennsylvania to enforce regulations intended to reduce pollution from farms, a large source of pollution in the bay.

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WITF recently reported that the EPA, working with the Lancaster County Conservation District and the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, are working with five farms across the Susquehanna from York County to assess mediation efforts and decide how to spend money allocated for pollution reduction efforts more effectively.

York County’s conservation district is not part of that. The EPA hasn’t contacted the conservation district about the ramifications of the settlement of the lawsuit, said Mark Flaharty, agriculture resource conservationist for the York County Conservation District.

He believes that Pennsylvania has enough regulations governing farmers and that what's needed is more stringent enforcement of those rules. The EPA has allocated more money for farmers in Pennsylvania to meet environmental standards, he said, and has not yet recommended stricter regulations. But Flaharty is skeptical. “If they’re giving you money, they can make the rules,” he said.

Innerst, who serves on the conservation district board, is also skeptical. He doesn’t believe that more inspections and more regulations are necessary. Working within the current framework of environmental rules, and implementing the best farming practices, he said, his farm has reduced its runoff to zero.

“We’re doing way more than we’re getting credit for,” he said.

Being a steward of the land and the water

The Innerst family settled on this land around 1906, near as they can tell. Dan Innerst’s son works on the farm – on this day, he was out cutting hay. His grandson, who just graduated from high school, works in a machine shop, but Innerst is confident that one day he will farm full time.

“I’ve been here all my life,” Innerst said, “a full-time farmer most of it.” After graduating from high school, we worked in a factory for a while and then did some construction work. But farming was what he wanted to do. It was more than making a live; it was a calling.

And part of that calling is being a steward of the land and the water.

That starts with how Innerst tills his soil. He doesn’t. Some years back, the farm converted to what’s called no-till farming, a means of planting crops without turning over the soil.

Tilling was the standard practice in agriculture for, well, since the beginning of farming, blades used to turn over the soil to prepare the land for planting. The image of a tractor pulling a tiller, its circular blades creating furrows in the land, has been the standard for ages.

But tilling can be destructive. During the early part of the 20th century, farmers in the southern plains tilled millions of acres of grasslands in the Oklahoma panhandle, Texas, New Mexico and Kansas, a practice that led to the Dust Bowl and what is considered one of the greatest ecological and economic disasters in history. The winds that raged over the prairie swept the topsoil away, creating dust storms so thick that they blotted out the sun, noon sometimes seeming like midnight. The result was devastating, ruining “an area the size of Pennsylvania,” Timothy Egan wrote in his National Book Award winning history of the Dust Bowl, “The Worst Hard Time.”

“Afterward,” Egan wrote, “some farmers got religion: they treated the land with greater respect, forming soil conservation districts, restoring some of the grass, and vowing to never repeat the mistakes that led to the collapse of the natural world around them and the death of the children breathing its air.”

In these parts, the wind isn’t the menace. It’s water. Stormwater washes tilled soil away and deposits it in streams and rivers, carrying with it elements that endanger the quality of the water, killing streams − and eventually the Chesapeake.

Because of that, many farmers – Innerst included – have converted to no-till farming, using a machine that cuts a narrow slit in the topsoil and depositing the seed in it. It has benefits beyond preserving the soil, Innerst said. Old plants, instead of being plowed under, can decompose in the field, creating richer soil and making the land more productive.

Innerst recalls that when he was a kid he would have to walk the furrows and pick stones out of the divots. “Now,” he said, “we don’t have to deal with that.”

Another innovation was managing the manure produced by the steer on the farm. It may seem simple, but some years back Innerst built a roof over a barnyard – a yard behind the barn that was built in 1838, housing about 60 or 70 head – to prevent rain from carrying manure to the creek about 100 feet away.

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And then he got funding to restore Barshinger Creek, restoring the creek to its original state. Before, erosion had cut steep banks into the creek, and when it flooded water would rush through the lower pastures, washing away everything in its path. (Much of that storm water, Innerst said, flows from Red Lion Area High School and Dairyland Plaza, a shopping center in Red Lion. He said the flooding became worse when the shopping center was built some decades ago.) Now, he said, when the pasture floods, the water gently pools and recedes slowly. “It spreads out and slows down,” he said. “It doesn’t tear things up.” As a bonus, he said, the stream may soon become a natural habitat for trout.

It was expensive. Justin Kauffman, project manager for Aquatic Resource Restoration Company, headquartered in York, said the restoration cost about $1 million, the cost offset by government grants administered by the county.

Innerst said, “It was worth it.”

'We like it'

On a recent Monday, Innerst had taken some time away from cutting hay to show visitors around the farm. It was sunny and warm, a perfect day for farming.

He reflected on the family’s connection to the land. “My father took over from his father,” he said. “I took over from my father. I’m hoping my son will take over from me one day.”

He looked at the hill, planted with soybeans, and acknowledged its beauty.

“It’s not bad,” he said. “We like it.”

Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com.

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: York County Pa. farmer: We 'don't get enough credit' for bay cleanup