Why is the Land-Grant System Interested in Livestock Environmental Management Systems?
Practices as an Outdated Approach I will begin by making what may be viewed as critical and possibly controversial distinctions in terminology. Some might say the distinctions are semantic. But I believe they are important to the evolving discussion of environmental management systems and policy. Environmental management systems are about process and results. They are not about specific sets of best management or other practices. There is an evolving understanding that environmental management has moved beyond best practices or a “practice based” approach. It is about documented processes and it is about meeting targeted results. The practice based approach and best management practices emerged as a politically convenient or policy shortcut. They emerged within the USDA, which was (and is ) heavily accountable to agricultural interest groups who were (and perhaps even now are ) not willing to admit that they were a part of the nonpoint source environmental problem. The idea was to deve
