June 28 Outdoor Column

"Dancing the farm bill two-step"

We have all heard the old saying, “Two steps forward, one step back.” The Farm Bill passed this May is, in my opinion, a darned good example of Congress two-stepping across the habitat dance floor with conservation in tow.

This should not come as much of a surprise to anyone, as each time gas nears $4 per gallon at the pump President Bush strikes up the More Oil Band for a rousing rendition of the Oil Barrel Polka.

All together now, “Roll out the barrel, we’ll dig in A.N.W.R. for fun.”

A.N.W.R. is the political buzzword acronym for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is President Bush’s favorite bull’s eye for increasing domestic oil production … and, of course, destroying some pristine wildlife habitat to boot.

I digress, back to the Farm Bill.

Even the most dogmatic biologists and ecologists will not argue the value of our nation’s agricultural land in providing food and food products to the U.S. and many other nations around the globe.

But I would imagine that one could convince even the most staunch politicians and plutocrats that some land is simply not suitable for production of crops. In southeast Kansas, many areas are too wet. Travel across the border toward the Ozarks and rocky soil limits tillable crop acreage.

So why, you ask, is Congress relaxing the rules on some crucial conservation programs? Good question.

Following are just a few of the impacts that the new Farm Bill will have on conservation:

1. Prairie Grasslands. The northern Midwest contains slightly more than 20 million acres of the last remaining native prairie in the U.S. Booming grain prices, compounded with Federal incentives that discourage setting aside marginal agricultural land, are literally cutting into those 20 million acres of native prairie to the tune of approximately 2 percent loss each year.
Both the House and Senate pledged support for the “Sodsaver” provision of the Farm Bill that removed certain incentives for farming grasslands. The final Farm Bill language, however, only applied to certain states and even then deferred the decision to the states’ governors as to whether or not to adopt the program.

The result: Ducks Unlimited scientists estimate that 3.3 million acres of native prairie will be lost in the next five years.

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), originally developed with the 1985 Farm Bill to restore grasslands, also got a kick in the shin from the new Farm Bill. CRP acreage will be reduced by 18 percent, despite the proven track record of providing valuable upland habitat and protection of topsoil in highly erodible areas.
High demand for grain, such as corn used in ethanol production, is providing a financial incentive that outweighs CRP subsidy payments to agricultural producers. Prepare to say goodbye to 4 million acres of CRP grasslands in the next four years. Nice work, Mr. Congressman.

2. Wetlands. The new Farm Bill reduced the amount of land eligible for enrollment in the Wetland Reserve Program (WRP) from 250,000 acres per year to 153,000 acres per year. WRP subsidizes costs to landowners for development of wetlands on their land. In addition to providing diverse wildlife habitats, wetlands serve as flood control buffers by storing floodwater in runoff events and releasing it slowly.

The silver lining in the 2008 Farm Bill is that there still are viable conservation components in the 2008 Farm Bill. Even though both the Conservation Reserve Program and the Wetland Reserve Program took a load of buckshot, the U.S. is still leaps and bounds ahead of most other nations in the area of conservation. We have more than 39 million acres of restored grasslands that we would not have without CRP. Nearly 2 million acres of wetlands have been created through WRP that would otherwise quite possibly be marginal cropland.

So, I challenge all conservation-minded readers of At Woods Edge to remain informed about conservation programs at the national level. E-mail or write our U.S. Representatives and Senators to express your thanks for their continued support of conservation and to remind them that you will be keeping an eye on their votes on conservation programs.