Brett Hulsey of the Midwest Office of Sierra Club forwarded this Monday.
Posted by Jane Clark
New York Times
Monday, June 18, 2001
Unlikely Allies Press to Add Conservation to Farm Bill
By ELIZABETH BECKER
WASHINGTON, DC -- A coalition of more than 100 environmental and hunting
organizations, from the Sierra Club to the National Rifle Association, is
trying to turn the measure that will set farm policy for the coming years
into the major conservation act of this Congress.
With the recently enacted $1.3 trillion tax cut squeezing out most new
spending programs, the conservationists are focusing on what is typically
known as the farm bill as their best bet for recovering millions of acres of
wetlands, prairies, grassland and forests and protecting the wildlife that
live on the land.
Few other bills offer both the money -- $79 billion in new financing over
the next five years -- and the assurance that the legislation will become
law. The bill pays for the subsidies that have for decades underwritten
farmers who grow major crops like corn, wheat, rice and soybeans.
But in the last 15 years, since conservation programs were added to the farm
program, farmers have lined up for cash payments in return for taking their
land out of production and letting it return to the wild.
Already, farmers have voluntarily set aside more than 35 million acres as
nature reserves and another million acres of wetlands as part of the two
major conservation programs supported by the farm program. There is a
backlog of farmers and ranchers who have applied for $3.7 billion in
payments for setting aside an additional 68 million acres, but the programs
have run out of money.
Conservation and hunting groups support payments to farmers for returning
some of their acreage to a natural state because it not only helps sustain
wildlife but also helps farmers hold on to their property. In addition, it
slows the encroachment of suburbs into the countryside.
"The conservation programs in the farm bill have really helped the farmer
hold the line against developers," said Susan Lamson of the National Rifle
Association, making points more often associated with the Friends of the
Earth.
The environmental and hunting groups are asking that a new farm bill include
money for the protection of another million acres of wetlands and 10 million
more acres of land through the conservation reserve program. They are going
up against the powerful farm and agribusiness lobbies that have helped
persuade Congress to keep increasing crop subsidies, which last year reached
a record $22 billion in commodity payments to farmers.
Environmental groups argue that these subsidies encourage overproduction of
the major crops, which not only keeps prices flat but also pollutes rivers
and soil with chemicals.
"When farms go into overproduction you have dirty water and dirty air," said
Brett Hulsey of the Sierra Club. "With conservation programs, you have clean
water, reduced flooding and more open space."
In Congress, these environmentalists, as well as the hunting and fishing
groups, the so-called hooks-and-bullets crowd, have found natural allies
among senators and representatives from states where farmers receive little
of the $20 billion annual subsidies for the major crops. More than 120 House
members wrote to the Agriculture Committee chairman this week asking for
support for the conservation programs.
"We could turn this farm bill into the great conservation bill of the 21st
century," said Representative Ron Kind, Democrat of Wisconsin, who is
leading the movement in the House to rewrite the farm bill with conservation
as its centerpiece.
Congress has begun considering how to rewrite the farm bill, which was last
passed in 1996 as the Freedom to Farm Act. Representative Larry Combest,
Republican of Texas and chairman of the Agriculture Committee, has concluded
that the major commodity subsidy programs should be more predictable, with
farmers receiving less money when their crops fetch higher prices. He has
yet to recommend how much money should go to conservation.
"This is a work in progress," said an aide to Mr. Combest. "When the
environmentalists discovered the farm bill, they made it trendy. Now the
conservation programs are more oriented to Eastern farmers. Mr. Combest
prefers the more traditional point of view of protecting soil banks that
would give more money to the Western areas."
That geographic split is evident throughout Congress. In the Senate, a group
of 43 Republican and Democratic senators from New England and mid-Atlantic
states have formed an informal caucus to support farm conservation programs.
Most of their farmers from Maine to Maryland either grow vegetables and
fruits or are dairy farmers and therefore ineligible for the major commodity
subsidy programs. But they can and have taken advantage of the conservation
programs.
In the current farm bill, conservation payments have become so popular they
rank third, behind payments for growing corn and wheat. Over five years,
government payments to corn farmers were $24.3 billion, to wheat farmers
$13.2 billion and to conservation programs $8.24 billion.
"In many parts of farm country, conservation is now the single most
important source of government assistance to agriculture, especially for
small and medium-size farms," said Ken Cook, president of Environmental
Working Group.
During the Republican revolution in which Newt Gingrich was House speaker,
the conservation programs were nearly lost. When the House wrote the initial
Freedom to Farm Act of 1996, the bill excluded financing for conservation.
But Representative Sherwood Boehlert, Republican of New York, offered an
amendment to reinstate the programs, and the measure won by a vote of 372 to
37, establishing the now classic divide between Eastern and Western farm
states over financing.
"Conservation used to be considered the purview of the Midwest and its
eroded soil," Mr. Boehlert said in an interview. "With the expanded programs
it has worked wonders for our Eastern farmers who were on the edge."
With so much money at stake in the new revision of the farm bill, Mr.
Combest has vowed to present a new farm bill to the House by the end of
July, nearly a year in advance of the Senate. For their part, the
environmentalists in the House say they will offer legislation this month to
expand the conservation programs.
"Our competition is the commodity payments, and there is only so much money
in the bill," said Scott Sutherland of Ducks Unlimited, a conservation group
supported by hunters. "We want funding put back for the wetlands and we know
there are members of Congress who are hunters and anglers who will want to
preserve those wetlands."
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