As demands for more controlled manure management heighten, policy makers seek indicators to assess the environmental impacts of livestock production and to subsequently direct manure management policy. Farm size indicators, based on number of animals per farm, are currently used to target federal manure management policy (USDA-USEPA, 1999). In this way, federal policy is directed toward the nations’ largest livestock facilities. However, as it is becoming increasingly evident that all farms, regardless of size, have an important role to play in protecting the environment from nutrient pollution, state and local policy makers have begun to cast the nutrient management policy net more broadly.

In October of 2002, the Wisconsin state legislature passed a set of eight administrative rules and performance standards directed at the control and prevention of polluted runoff (WDNR, 2003). Agricultural-related pollution abatement efforts are directed toward controlling nutrient losses through the implementation of nutrient management plans on all Wisconsin farms by the year 2008. Nutrient management plans will only be mandatory, however, if the state provides at least 70% of the cost of pollution abatement technologies (e.g., buffer strips, manure storage, development of nutrient management plans), with cost-sharing monies initially directed toward designated water quality impairment zones.