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Where We've Been and Where We are Going
(photo
USDA) | Federal agricultural policies
are incredibly important not only because they influence practices
on the 55% of the land in the contiguous United States devoted to
agriculture (1.1 billion acres), but also because they dictate how
huge sums of money are spent -- a record $32 billion in fiscal year
2000.
But federal farm programs often work against environmental goals
and leave the majority of producers out in the cold. Traditional
farm programs focus almost entirely on one kind of farming -- the
growth of animal feed grains, grains and cotton (commodity crops) --
and tie support payments to production levels. The result is that
livestock producers, fruit and vegetable growers, nurseries and
greenhouse owners and others, including small and medium-sized
farmers of all kinds, get short-changed or ignored completely.
Groundswell of support
Leading up to the passage of
the 2002 Farm Bill in early May 2002, there was an unprecedented
effort to make federal agriculture policy work better for the
environment and family farmers by refocusing funding to reward good
conservation practices instead of just increased production. Such
reform would protect the environment and help many more farmers in
more regions around the country.
Unfortunately, despite the strong and growing support in
Congress, the media and the public for such reform, our collective
efforts were not as successful as we had hoped. In October 2001, an
effort led by Representatives Kind (D-WI), Boelhert (R-NY), Dingell
(D-MI) and Gilchrest (R-MD) to refocus farm spending to protect and
enhance wildlife habitat, water quality, open space and public
health and to help family farmers was narrowly defeated by a vote of
226- to 200.
On the positive side, the strength of support for this effort
paved the way for the Senate to pass the most conservation-oriented
Farm Bill ever. The Senate bill would have provided an average of
$4.4 billion per year for conservation programs, compared to $3.4
billion in the House version and $1.95 billion currently, as well as
including important reforms to commodity subsidy programs.
Setback to reforms
To our great disappointment,
however, in negotiations to arrive at a final bill, virtually all
the key reforms and a significant amount of the increase in
conservation funding of the Senate version were lost. In many
respects, the final 2002 Farm Bill is a disappointment for
conservation and exacerbates the excesses of commodity subsidies
that favor large agribusiness at the expense of the majority of the
nation's farmers.
Despite being disappointing overall, the final 2002 Farm Bill
does provide a significant increase in funds for key conservation
programs over current funding levels and offer great opportunities
to make significant advances on many key conservation challenges.
See our Farm
Conservation Toolkit for information on the many opportunities
for producers, conservation organizations, state and local
governments and others to leverage Farm Bill conservation dollars.
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