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President Bush’s Budget Slashes Farm Conservation Programs that Promote Clean Water and Prevent Sprawl President Bush’s Budget Proposal for Fiscal Year 2002 would eliminate some of the most important environmental programs in the budget. These voluntary programs administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture help farmers protect sensitive wetlands, adopt environmentally-responsible farming practices, and keep land in the pathway of sprawl from being developed. The Bush budget calls for zeroing out the Wetlands Reserve Program, the Farmland Protection Program, and the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program. In failing to provide funds for these vital programs, the Bush budget dismisses them as having “completed their mission.” Nothing could be further from the truth with thousands of farmers and ranchers lined up waiting to participate in these programs. Rather than being eliminated, the Sierra Club believes that these programs should be expanded to help even more farmers who want to do the right thing for the environment. Annual direct payments to farmers have skyrocketed from less than $10 billion in the early 1990s to a record $32 billion in 2000. Over this period, however, annual conservation spending has been held to less than $2 billion, about 6 percent of farm program spending. Farmers, ranchers, and private foresters can and want to take practical steps to enhance water supplies, wildlife habitat, and long-term soil productivity. However, according to USDA, roughly three out of four who seek assistance for most conservation programs are turned away because of lack of funds. Specific programs slated for elimination under the Bush plan include: Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) The Wetlands Reserve Program was created in 1990 and has become one of the most successful programs for protecting wetlands having successfully preserved or restored nearly 1 million acres. The WRP helps farmers take out of production farmland that is otherwise unsuitable for agricultural use because it is highly prone to flooding. The land is preserved or restored to provide critical ecological functions such as storing floodwaters, filtering sediments that cause pollution, and providing habitat for wildlife. Removing such marginal lands from production also helps control prices by providing disincentives for farmers to overproduce. Today, there are over 3,000 farms and ranches waiting to enroll another 570,000 acres of wetlands. Just enrolling 250,000 acres annually would require $275 million per year. Much of this acreage lies in the Upper Mississippi River Basin – Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The farming practices in these states are major sources of the fertilizer that winds-up down-river and has caused a "dead zone" the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico where marine life cannot survive. Scientists have found that restoring lost wetlands – which intercept and filter nutrients from fertilizer before farmland runoff reaches streams and creeks – is among the most cost-effective strategies to reduce the size of the dead zone. The following table shows the tremendous need in the Midwest for the WRP Program.
Source: State WRP Coordinators, Natural Resources
Conservation Service, USDA. More information on the Wetlands Reserve Program. Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP) The WHIP Program is a voluntary program that provides cost-sharing for landowners to apply an array of wildlife practices to develop habitat that will support upland wildlife, wetland wildlife, threatened and endangered species, fisheries, and other species. A total of $50 million was authorized in the 1996 Farm Bill and these funds were fully exhausted in 1999. Experts at the Natural Resources Conservation Service estimate that more than 10,000 farmers would annually seek federal assistance to protect and restore wildlife habitat under the WHIP program if funding were available. NRCS estimates that 7.6 million acres need to be treated to enhance and maintain locally and regionally significant wildlife habitat. Historically, 15 percent of program funding has been used to develop wildlife habitat for federally endangered and threatened species. At an average easement cost of $1,692 per acre, over $1.3 billion is needed annually. Farmland Protection Program According to USDA approximately 2 million acres of farmland are lost each year to development. The Farmland Protection Program provides matching federal funds to purchase easements from farmers to preserve farmland and prevent sprawl. At least $1 billion is needed annually to protect just 10 percent of this threatened land. Between January and March of this year alone, the USDA received requests for more than $116 million in matching funds from farmers and ranchers willing to protect their land through the FPP. If fully funded, this year's requests would have leveraged $186 million dollars of state and local money and protected more than 770 farms. Up to Top |
