Hearing of the Senate Committe on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry on Agriculture Conservation Programs

Hearing of the Senate Committe on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry on Agriculture Conservation

STATEMENT OF SENATOR TOM HARKIN (D-IA) ON AGRICULTURE CONSERVATION

"Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding this hearing today on agriculture conservation programs. As chair of this committee while we wrote the 2002 farm bill, I worked with President Bush and with you, Mr. Chairman, on the House side to greatly expand programs for conservation, particularly on working lands. We all have reason to be proud of the bill we wrote then.

"I'm particularly pleased to have James Andrew of Jefferson, Iowa on the panel. As a committed steward of his land, Mr. Andrew has been a leader in agricultural conservation. Mr. Andrew has spoken to groups including the USDA's farm policy forum about his experience with the Conservation Security Program.

"Mr. Chairman, the long term goal for agricultural conservation needs to be an integrated set of voluntary conservation tools - land retirement, cost-share, incentives for stewardship and better practices - that allow producers to maximize their environmental performance on every acre, while they maximize their productivity and profitability.

"The commodity programs have always paid producers for what crops they grow and how much they produce. With the WTO and increasing trade pressure for farmers to receive "green payments," we need to pay farmers for how they grow. That means we need to compensate producers when they sacrifice productivity in favor of conservation, by, for instance, cutting hay later in the season to prevent harm to nesting birds. And we need to be equitable, allowing producers that have voluntarily taken steps toward better stewardship to receive stewardship and maintenance payments, just as those who needed incentives and resources to adopt the same practices.

"Most of conservation spending in earlier years was for land retirement through the Conservation Reserve Program - a vitally important program that provides critical protection to highly erodable land, and has been vital in protecting important wildlife habitat, such as the prairie pothole region. But land retirement is only part of the answer to the conservation question. The most important change in the last farm bill was the increasing emphasis on conservation on working land. The greatest opportunity for conservation gain is on land that is producing America's food, fiber, and increasingly, our renewable energy. But since 2002, caps on the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and draconian caps on the Conservation Security Program (CSP) have prevented these programs from having the broad impact they were intended to have.

"The CSP was conceived as a broad program, open to all agriculture producers, to reward and incentivize good conservation practices on working land. The program was intended to be open to producers at all levels of conservation achievement, nationwide, and recognizing the diverse conservation practices in different regions and crops. Unfortunately, that vision was not implemented.

"Congress has put significant caps on CSP funding, year by year, culminating in a cap included in the budget reconciliation bill so tight that the program may no longer have capacity to sign up new watersheds after 2007. USDA's implementation has resulted in the vast majority of agricultural producers not having had even a single opportunity to sign up for this program. There has been a concerted effort to stifle this program as an effective force to reward and encourage agricultural conservation. Of 2264 total watersheds in the US, only 298 - a little more than 13% -- have even had CSP offered in the three years the program has been in operation.

"I agree with Chief Knight, who has said that "the Conservation Security Program is the future." Much of the difficulty the program faces has been caused by the severe spending caps, and while I disagree with many of the NRCS's decisions in implementing the program, I give the agency credit for correcting some of their earlier missteps by making the program work better for farmers and ranchers. But we must do more to ensure that this innovative program achieves its potential.

"Mr. Chairman, agricultural conservation holds the promise of better stewardship of our agricultural land, and cleaner water and air and more wildlife for everyone. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today, and thank you again for holding this hearing."

http://harkin.senate.gov/news.cfm?id=256573