08-11-2001
AGRICULTURE: A Different Kind of Farm Bill
For some economists, the debate over the 10-year farm bill and how to
spend $37 billion to $80 billion on farmland conservation is like arguing
over which Band-Aid might cure gangrene. Peter VanDoren, editor of the
Cato Institute's Regulation, maintains that the conservation challenges
are rooted in the federal farm program itself. "If you really want
conservation," he says, "all you have to do is eliminate all
farm programs. Lots of land would become forest, farmers would move into
cities, and all the urban yuppies could have all the forests they wanted
to look at."
But conserving rural land is a big part of why the United States plows
money into agriculture in the first place. Many urban and suburban
lawmakers wink at multibillion-dollar payments to commodity producers
(those growers of corn, soybeans, sorghum, cotton, barley, oats, rice, or
wheat) who don't live anywhere near their districts. They pass the farm
bill partly because of the need for a domestic source of food and fiber,
and partly because of this country's farm heritage. But mostly they
support it because of the reality that the farm bill gives money to
conservation and to food stamps.
In 1996, House Agriculture Committee members discovered just how important
conservation funding was when they tried to pass the six-year
authorization known as "Freedom to Farm" without it. A floor
fight, led by Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert, R-N.Y., put the money back in.
Ironically, the bill's conservation section remained intact over Freedom
to Farm's lifespan, while the commodity section, which was supposed to
wean farmers from government subsidies, collapsed under tenaciously low
commodity prices.
Now a diverse coalition is hoping to use the new farm bill to make
conservation, and not crop payments, the centerpiece of farm policy.
Coalition members have different priorities: The Sierra Club is worried
about water quality and about farmland being devoured by expanding
metropolitan areas; the "hook and bullet" groups want vulnerable
lands retired as sanctuaries for wildlife; and sustainable agriculture
groups want to help farmers pay for conservation on active farms. With the
United States hoping to launch another round of talks at the World Trade
Organization this fall, many groups feel that now is the time to spend as
much as 30 percent, and ideally 50 percent, of the farm bill's funding on
WTO-friendly conservation investments. The House Agriculture Committee
devoted about 20 percent of the bill's funding to conservation measures,
and the Senate, which won't act until the fall, seems poised to match or
exceed that amount.
Agricultural groups call the conservation coalition well-meaning, but they
say that any farm bill must put the interests of farmers first.
Conservation is a supplement, not a replacement, for commodity programs,
says Brian Sweatland, director of environmental policy for the National
Association of Wheat Growers.
Half of U.S. farmers don't get any government help at all, according to
the General Accounting Office. Current farm programs focus on the large
commodity growers in the Midwest and South; many farmers in California,
Florida, the Southwest, and the Northeast get little aid. Of the farmers
who do receive support, small farms receive payments averaging about
$4,000, while large farms get on average about $64,700.
The conservation coalition intends to use the distribution gap as its
wedge into Congress. "We want members to start looking at what comes
back to their district," says Susanne Fleek, director of government
relations for the Environmental Working Group, an environmental and public
health research and advocacy organization. "We believe that we can
return a greater value to the taxpayers through conservation policy."
Fleek points to pending water regulations from the Environmental
Protection Agency as an example of the links between farm conservation and
urban policy. New York City avoided having to build a $6 billion to $8
billion water filtration plant by working with upstate farmers to reduce
pollution runoff.
Tom Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and
Forestry Committee, is also hoping to significantly boost conservation's
role. The Iowa Democrat says that current subsidy programs were designed
for the farmers of a generation ago, and the resulting distortions have
been disastrous for many growers. "We can't yank the rug out from
commodity programs without causing a terrible collapse in land
prices," he says, "but we need to begin to turn the
corner."
Harkin intends to base the farm bill on his proposed Conservation Security
Act, which would provide about $8 billion in incentive payments over the
life of the 10-year bill. "Some farmers have been left out of our
farm programs, but they're a vital part of the agricultural network, and
this is a way of supporting them," he says. Harkin would like to let
farmers enter voluntary, long-term conservation contracts paying up to
$50,000 a year, depending on how comprehensive they made their
conservation practices. The simplest contracts would allow farmers to get
up to $20,000 for practices many already use, including nutrient or pest
management and cover cropping.
Incentive payments could fill a gap between the two types of conservation
programs currently funded through the farm bill: the retiring of
vulnerable lands, and the cost sharing of conservation measures.
Land-retirement programs, such as the cropland and wetland reserve
programs, now get 85 percent of the farm program's conservation dollars,
with the money being used to take fragile lands out of production.
Cost-share programs, such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program,
pay farmers and ranchers up to $10,000 a year for the costs of managing
their water, soil, and air quality on their active farms. The
Environmental Quality program also allows incentive payments, but they're
not a priority.
Farmers' associations want any additional conservation dollars to go to
active farms, instead of toward programs that take more land out of
production. The National Corn Growers Association has made incentive
payments its top conservation priority. Bruce Knight, the Corn Growers'
vice president for public policy, explains: "We want to see
conservation practices make the bridge to the next generation of farm
policy that supports working farmers." But many outdoors groups and
individual farmers very much want to see more funding devoted to retiring
vulnerable lands. They point to the 11 million acres waiting to enter the
programs and the dramatic success achieved in helping wildlife
rebound.
Nobody's quite sure what incentive payments might look like when the
Senate committee finishes its bill this fall. No matter how many groups
favor an incentive-based payment system to promote conservation, it
represents a radical change from past farm bills.
The House committee responded to the conservation pressures by expanding
funding to the existing programs by $17 billion, or to about 20 percent of
the total bill. Although agricultural and environmental interest groups
applaud giving more money to conservation programs, some question the
manner in which the committee allocated the funds. "The House ... is
trying to move so fast on the farm-bill process that they just threw more
money at our conservation needs, instead of looking at the next generation
of programs," Knight complains.
The House committee gave the biggest, and most controversial, increase to
the cost-sharing Environmental Quality Incentives Program, upping its
annual funding from $200 million to $1.2 billion. But it simultaneously
dropped a prohibition that barred large feedlot operators from
participating in the program, and allowed for one-year contracts, instead
of five to 10 years. Environmentalists, pointing to the feedlots' costs
for meeting upcoming federal regulations, charge that the committee's
version would turn half of EQIP into a subsidy for large feedlots.
"[Under] the one-year, you can walk in the door, say you're going to
get your waste lagoon, put it in, and have no other obligations,"
says Ferd Hoefner, the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition's Washington
representative. The House committee report countered that lawmakers want
to make the program more flexible and allow the money to get into the
hands of farmers and ranchers faster.
The House committee also slashed the available guaranteed funding for
technical assistance, a move that the National Association of Conservation
Districts calls a "poison pill." Technical assistance pays for
biologists and soil scientists to help farmers diagnose problems and
develop solutions. "If you're a producer who's not in a cost-share or
land-retirement program," says Ernie Shea, the association's chief
executive officer, "chances are you're not going to get any help
anymore."
The bill will face a fight on the House floor, where numerous
Representatives remember the 1996 experience and are prepared to push for
a stronger conservation section. Many environmentalists want conservation
to account for at least 30 percent of farm spending, as it did before
1996. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis., has 120 co-sponsors on his Working Lands
Stewardship Act, and Reps. John Thune, R-S.D., and Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio,
are promoting a House companion bill to Sen. Harkin's Conservation
Security Act. "If we do this right," says Kind, "this next
farm bill could be the next conservation bill of the 21st
century."
The specter of the WTO could bolster the prospects of conservation
advocates on the House floor. The Uruguay Round agreed to limit
trade-distorting farm policies, but encouraged conservation programs.
Several members of the Senate Agriculture Committee also sit on the
Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over trade issues. Harkin cited
the WTO as one of his first reasons for focusing on conservation in the
farm bill. "We are signatories," he said. "We're in it,
regardless of how you may have felt about it before. There are provisions
that we need to abide by."
Still, many farmers don't understand why conservationists are making such
a fuss about the farm bill. "For a farmer to be in business for the
long time, you have to be a conservationist," says Bart Ruth, a
Nebraska soybean farmer and the president of the American Soybean
Association. "You have to keep the fertility of the land and keep the
topsoil in place." In the end, farmers are likely to take advantage
of whatever Congress approves, says Iowa State University economist Mike
Duffy. "Through the farm groups, you argue a position. But as an
individual, you take what's there."
Corine Hegland
National Journal
