Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company The New
York Times
June 18, 2001, Monday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 12; Column
5; National Desk
LENGTH: 1091
words
HEADLINE: Unlikely Allies Press to Add
Conservation to Farm Bill
BYLINE: By ELIZABETH BECKER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, June 15
BODY: 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."