Omaha World-Herald March 11, 2002
Revised rules might favor big feedlots
BY: Jake Thompson
SOURCE: WORLD-HERALD BUREAU
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
For the first time, Congress may allow the nation's largest cattle and hog feedlots to receive subsidies to help cope with clean air and water rules.
If it does, it would be a major victory for the nation's cattle and hog groups, which have made eliminating a 5-year-old rule barring large feedlots from getting federal aid a top priority this year.
Big-feedlot advocates insist they need the money to meet ever-tightening environmental rules.
"The federal government has a need to assist these operations to help keep them in business," Wendy Woodburn, spokeswoman for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, said recently. But family farm supporters say the change will unwittingly help feedlots with more than 1,000 animals expand and drive out smaller feedlots.
Furthermore, the new taxpayer-paid subsidies could make longstanding environmental concerns about large feedlots worse, they contend. Many cattle and hog lots have caused air pollution from airborne animal waste particles and endangered waterways when manure handling lagoons leaked.
"At the least it's contradictory to get (taxpayer) money to build technology that causes environmental harm," said Ferd Hoefner, a lobbyist for the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition in Washington.
The controversial change is tucked into the House and Senate farm bills, which are being negotiated in a conference committee. Both propose to strike the ban and dramatically boost funding, from $ 200 million to $ 1.5 billion a year, in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, called EQUIP.
Hoefner and family farm advocates favor the Senate's bill because it restricts payments, while the House offers more open-ended subsidies to big feedlots.
The Senate bill raises maximum payments from $ 10,000 a year to $ 30,000 a year with a five-year limit of $ 150,000. It limits the number of feedlots for which an owner can qualify to receive payments.
The House bill boosts the maximum payments to $ 50,000 a year with a $ 200,000 five-year limit. It allows a corporation that owns many feedlots to qualify for payments at each feedlot.
The modifications, affecting feedlots in Nebraska and Iowa, reverse a federal policy that had favored smaller cattle, poultry and hog operations under EQUIP.
When EQUIP was created in the 1996 Freedom to Farm law, large feedlots were prohibited from receiving EQUIP money because lawmakers were trying to find a way to mainly help the many thousands of small feedlots with fewer than 1,000 animals meet environmental rules.
Rep. Tom Osborne, R-Neb., said he favored opening payments to all operations.
"Also, the medium-sized livestock producers are really feeling the tightest squeeze of the environmental regulations," said Osborne, a member of the House Agriculture Committee. "The largest operations are almost all compliant, but it is the medium-sized operations who struggle to meet strict environmental regulations."
They now don't qualify.
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said the Senate strikes a balance by providing some aid to large feedlots, while retaining the lion's share for smaller operations. He said curbing multiple payments to a single corporate owner is another important improvement in the Senate bill.
Both bills share one important goal: helping feedlot owners meet new pollution regulations. Another series of rules are expected soon from the Environmental Protection Agency.
"It's a carrot rather than a stick to get people to practice good environmental stewardship," Nelson said.
Greg Ruehle, executive director of the Nebraska Cattlemen, said his association favors the House language. In Nebraska, a 3,000-head feedlot often would involve a growing family operation.
"What we're much more likely to see is expansion so a son or daughter can come home to the operation," Ruehle said of the House provisions.
In Nebraska, though, the bulk of the state's feedlots are smaller, frequently seasonal, operations. Of the 5,200 feedlots, 4,505 of them were under the 1,000-animal size in 2000, according to state statistics.
Ruehle objected to the federal government creating a social policy that blesses smaller operations with money to protect the environment, while requiring larger ones to pay for their own pollution controls.
"We shouldn't debate big vs. small in secret behind the skirts of environmental quality," Ruehle said. "Both deserve to be heard."
Copyright 2002 The Omaha World-Herald Company:
