Bill Berry: USDA stands firm on conservation lands

Bill Berry  —  8/05/2008 5:56 am

It wasn't exactly headline news, but then a lot of important stories go under-reported these days.

U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer put the kibosh last week on penalty-free exits from the Conservation Reserve Program, at least for the time being. Pressure from some commodity groups and other interests had USDA boxed in, but give the department credit for holding off the hounds. Or as straight-up people say, "A deal's a deal." Farmers and ranchers agreed to annual payments based on the land's rental values at the time they signed up.

Busting contracts may work for star running backs, but not the rest of us.

CRP was established in 1985. It pays farmers and ranchers to set aside land for at least 15 years, sometimes longer in certain categories. It remains the most successful private lands conservation program in U.S. history, and its gains are measurable. Farmers have benefited from idling land and getting paid for it; wildlife and conservation groups love CRP for the habitats it enriches; and regular citizens benefit in multiple ways, not the least of which is protection of the public's waterways.

Rather than talking about putting the squeeze on the program's acres, we ought to be considering how to extend and strengthen benefits in a next-generation conservation program.

This wasn't the first time certain farm groups have pressured for early outs and no penalties, but high commodity prices and concerns about food stocks have spiked interest this year. Even the Washington Post called for penalty-free early outs.

The commodity folks' position is no surprise. They've never embraced CRP, and some have argued that the program hurts rural economies by shutting down the infrastructure. Evidence to that effect is limited and conflicting and ignores the historic decline of small farming in America that's been going on for more than 100 years.

Almost no one can deny that allowing penalty-free early outs would ignore environmental consequences. Most of the 30.6 million CRP acres (for scale, Wisconsin has 35.8 million acres of land in all uses) in the program today are environmentally sensitive and are best not farmed, at least not in the intensive row-cropping patterns that mark our corn, soybean and wheat lands from southern Wisconsin to eastern Washington.

In its early stages, the program did serve as a retirement out for some producers, but locking the land up in what amounts to a conservation easement has preserved an important strategic land base for the whole country and achieved big environmental gains. USDA has consistently moved to more of an environmentally based approach for enrollments as the program has matured, so remaining acres are all the more important.

The market is already causing a shift. Almost 5 million acres have left CRP anyway. Farmers and ranchers have declined to re-enroll these lands at the end of their contracts. That's not to say that the land is now in production, but you can bet a good chunk is with commodity prices so high.

Some contract holders want to put the land back into production so much that they've paid penalties and removed it anyway. More than 70,000 acres left that way in April and May. Fine, that's how the rules are written.

Contracts will run out on another 1.15 million acres this September, and 3.8 million in September 2009. Even larger chunks will mature through 2012. Around 80 percent of producers have re-enrolled in recent years, but if commodity values increase, that percentage is likely to decline. Clearly, CRP will shrink noticeably in these years.

Protecting the remaining acres and strategically adding more is the way to go from a conservation standpoint. Other conservation programs get more money and attention, but few accomplish as much as CRP. It should serve as a starting point for a future program that focuses on making big gains across watersheds rather than one farm here and another a mile away.

The program should offer producers the opportunity to harvest and graze the lands in a measured manner. This has been resisted, but most people who look at the issue see grazing as a natural management technique. Mechanical harvesting can't quite mimic the value of fire for native vegetation, but it can be effective and may yield future energy crops.

CRP payments for the highest-value lands should be hiked, and producers should get added income boosts for agreeing to community- or watershed-scale sign-ups. They should also get incentives for successfully encouraging others to enroll.

Lands in CRP should be seen as strategic holdings that accomplish a host of ecosystem values for the whole nation, and they should be valued accordingly for the landowners who preserve them.

Short of an effective voluntary conservation vehicle for working lands, regulation of lands that don't meet important environmental standards may be the only option.

Bill Berry of Stevens Point writes a semimonthly column for The Capital Times.

Bill Berry  —  8/05/2008 5:56 am