Nutrient management plans are the primary mechanism used by regulators and agencies to encourage farmers to adopt strategies that reduce the impact of their operations on water quality. To be effective a plan must address multiple audiences including farmer needs and requirements imposed by regulators, agencies and financial institutions. Review of existing plans indicated that they were often hard for the farmer to use because basic information needed by the farmer was obscured by background information required by other users.

In Missouri we worked with stakeholders to develop a plan that meets the needs of users and reviewers of the plan. Our primary objective was to develop a plan that was user-friendly to farmers. To accomplish this we developed a three-part plan.

Section one “Yearly Recommendations” is geared to the farmer needs and provides an annual roadmap of manure and fertilizer management on a field-by-field basis. The yearly summaries are provided in a separate notebook from the rest of the plan to encourage the farmer to keep it close at hand for frequent reference.

Section two, “Plan Summary” includes an abbreviated summary of the plan including the strategies used to develop it and the farm maps. Section three “Farm Inventory” includes the extensive catalog of farm numbers, nutrient budgets and assessments required by reviewers to explain how the plan was developed. Sections two and three are in a separate notebook intended as a reference.

Much of the plan content is automatically generated using two software packages. Maps are generated in the Spatial Nutrient Management Planner (SNMP). Text and tables are generated with Manure Management Planner (MMP) using the document generator feature. Visit http://nmplanner.missouri.edu for more information about SNMP and MMP.

This poster will present an example nutrient management plan and discuss requirements to generate the plan in MMP and SNMP.