Program Rich Missouri topsoil is the life support for lush fields and pastures that color the landscape and make agriculture the largest industry in the state. Missouri pays a high price when that soil washes away by losing 74 million tons of topsoil to soil erosion every year. Since 1986, the Special Area Land Treatment, or SALT Program has focused on Missouri s soil erosion problems on a watershed basis. During the period from 1986 through the 1999 state fiscal year, SALT projects focused mainly on reducing only one aspect of nonpoint source water pollution sedimentation resulting from soil erosion off agricultural land.
Sediment is one of the most significant pollutants resulting from agriculture practices.
It may carry other pollutants such as pesticides or nutrients from fertilizers, which compound problems for the receiving stream or pond. Goals of the new AgNPS SALT projects include, but are not limited to, reducing pesticide and nutrient runoff from cropland, improving pasture management, reducing sedimentation from agricultural land, improving animal waste management, protecting and enhancing riparian corridors, and raising awareness of agricultural nonpoint source water pollution issues. The SALT program encourages total resource management planning to treat land in ways that protect it while still maximizing effective use of its resources. Management plans take the various natural resources in the watershed, as well as the threats to those resources, into account. They also identify what protective measures are needed and ways the measures can be implemented.