The new nutrient management act in Ontario will force producers to adopt new management practices to comply with the new laws. In order to evaluate how effective these new management activities are in reducing environmental impacts, on-farm monitoring programs will be required. This experiment involves three farms  being monitored extensively, called “reference farms”. The sites were instrumented and monitoring protocols and strategies were developed to determine the environmental and economic benefits associated with the implemented beneficial management practices  (BMPs.) The farms selected were meant to represent typical hog farms and also ones with environmental problems so that BMPs can be clearly assessed. The farms were assessed on nutrient distribution into the soil, ground water was monitored and tested as well as crop yields. The nitrogen budget was also a focus of the researchers work. Eight monitoring techniques are recommended in the paper to evaluate the effectiveness of the BMPs on the environment. It is suggested that the reference farms continue to test ground water and soil samples to be able to continually track the results of BMP.