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If not for OFBF’s participation, Ohio farmers’ voices may not have been heard by an advisory group looking at water consumption in the Great Lakes basin.

Leaders representing the eight states and two Canadian provinces in the Great Lakes basin have signed good faith agreements to protect the water resources within the largest fresh water supply in the world – the Great Lakes. That most recent agreement, signed in 2001, created an advisory group that would have input in the development of regulations for withdrawing water from the basin.

Those regulations would impact anyone using a specific amount of water per day – municipalities, industry and some agricultural operations.

OFBF’s representative on that panel is Larry Antosch, director of environmental research. Antosch said agriculture’s viewpoint of water use is very different from municipal or industrial use. Whereas those entities try to return as much water as they pull from the watershed, agriculture views efficient use to be using all that is withdrawn and not returning any water that could carry sediment or farm byproducts to the water’s source.

"That viewpoint would never have been presented or addressed if agriculture had not been at the table to talk about it," Antosch said.