The New York Times | August 27, 2001 | By ELIZABETH BECKER
Federal subsidies for leaving land as a habitat for ducks are helping farmers survive on the Dakota plains.
EDINA, N.D. - In the tawny summer landscape of the Dakota plains, where grasslands interrupt fields of wheat, flax and barley, the newest federally subsidized cash crop is fattening up before heading south for the winter.
Waves of ducks "45 million mallards, pintails, gadwalls and teals" will rise out of ponds and sloughs next month and fly over the heads of assembled hunters and birdwatchers who are flocking to the state and transforming tourism here.
But the most immediate beneficiaries are the farmers who own the waterfowl's habitat. In return for dependable annual payments, they turn their fields into grasslands that require little upkeep and become nesting and breeding grounds for ducks.
The subsidies help families hold onto small farms and allow young farmers to establish themselves.
At the same time, they have ensured the revival of a North American duck population that a decade ago was in serious decline.
"Protecting these small shallow wetlands with grass cover for the wildlife has been critical for the return of the ducks," said Ron Reynolds, the biologist who leads the United States Fish and Wildlife Service's habitat and population evaluation team that tracks the ducks here.
Now, as Congress debates the direction of farm policy over the next decade, this Prairie Pothole region, which stretches through the Dakotas into eastern Montana, is Exhibit A for lawmakers promoting more subsidies for conservation and less for traditional row crops like wheat and corn.
While some members of Congress are trying to rein in subsidies to large farmers that date to the Depression, North Dakota is a prime venue for viewing the unrecognized side of the debate over the $171 billion farm bill: spending to conserve the open spaces, fields, ranges and pastures, rather than subsidies for traditional crops.
Half of the land in the continental United States "900 million acres" is owned by private farmers and ranchers. How that land is used in the next decade will affect the survival of wildlife, like the ducks here, the quality of drinking water from city taps, the amount of pollution in streams, rivers and bays and the extent of urban sprawl. But many of the large farmers, backed by powerful agribusiness lobbies, oppose increases for conservation programs, presaging a big fight in coming weeks as the House and Senate debate their different approaches.
In the last five years, conservation payments have fallen to 9 percent of all farm subsidies from 30 percent of the payments.
And the proposed House farm bill dilutes a crucial conservation provision, known as the "swampbuster" section, that protects wetlands on farms that receive federal subsidies.
Yet even in North Dakota, where farmers are more dependent on traditional subsidies than those in any other state are, farms in several counties have stunned lawmakers by embracing conservation and dedicating one-fourth of their cropland to the conservation reserve program.
"Cropping wheat is just very risky and expensive, and we would have lost our farm if we hadn't signed up for the conservation program," said Patty Hofmann, a 35-year-old farmer and a widow with three young sons.
Mrs. Hofmann and her late husband, Kendall, put most of their fields into the conservation reserve program, turning it into grassland where ducks and other wildlife could nest and breed near small ponds on the property. Two years ago, they moved an old one-room school house onto their farm and converted it into a small hunting lodge.
"Now that we've put in the grass cover, we wake up to pheasants whistling in the morning and the grouse are all around the house," she said.
Mrs. Hofmann will never get rich on the $13,000 annual conservation subsidy she receives for her 450-acre spread. But the money covers most of the mortgage on her land, and the $11,000 she earns each fall from the hunters, who shoot duck, pheasant and deer on her property, pay for her annual living costs. And she will be able to rear her sons on the land settled by their German forebears.
Originally proposed by mainstream national environmental groups, the conservation reserve program has won the support of groups like the National Rifle Association and Pheasants Forever.
Last year, Ducks Unlimited, a group that works to preserve waterfowl habitat, opened a $2.7 million northern plains headquarters in Bismarck, N.D., hoping to protect if not expand this mecca for hunters.
The Prairie Pothole Region is named for the thousands of shallow ponds carved into the upper plains by glaciers more than 10,000 years ago. From the air their undulating shapes seem to have been painted by Salvador Dali. On the ground these homely ponds teeming with insects appear randomly, some nestled alongside gullies and roads, others tucked in the middle of fields and pastures.
The potholes provide ideal breeding country for shorebirds, songbirds and gamebirds that follow the migratory route to Central and South America. This time of year the skies are filled with white pelicans and blue herons as well as the ubiquitous Canada geese.
But until 1985, farmers freely drained those ponds to expand their fields, planted crops and unwittingly removed much of the nesting cover of North American ducks, 70 percent of them born and bred in the Prairie Pothole Region.
By the 1980's, drought added to the farm-driven calamities, and the population of ducks, pheasants, grouse and even deer dwindled. Midwesterners who once lived for the first day of hunting season packed away their guns.
"It was hard to even find a deer back then, and there were years when we didn't have a pheasant to hunt," said Lyle Sjostrom, a 61-year-old farmer who was early to enroll his land in the voluntary conservation program.
Then Congress included the conservation program in the 1985 farm bill, and the farmers of North Dakota enrolled more than three million acres of cropland; nationwide, more than 36 million acres have been put aside for this program. The same farm measure included the "swampbusters" provision that withdrew all federal subsidies to farmers who drained wetlands.
Like in a biblical tale, the rains returned in the early 1990's, filling the protected potholes. Grass replaced wheat fields. And the ducks returned.
Critics, like the big grain companies, predicted that American farmers would underproduce wheat and corn by putting aside so much acreage, but the opposite has occurred.
Thanks to technological advances and the globalization of the food market, there is a glut of grain worldwide, and prices have remained flat at 1960 levels. And now there is a waiting list of farmers who want to put their land in conservation programs.
By getting into the program early, Mr. Sjostrom said he was able to hold onto the farm and begin passing it on to his 32-year-old son, Todd.
"If we'd kept our land in wheat the fixed costs for equipment, fertilizer would have played havoc with our budget," Mr. Sjostrom said.
Instead, the Sjostroms now have 40 percent of their 4,000 acre farm in the conservation program. Todd Sjostrom, who has a full-time job selling seeds, is one of the few members of his generation who can afford to become a farmer. "This takes the gamble out of farming and makes it profitable," he said. "If we stuck to wheat and had to buy all the equipment, we'd barely cover our expenses with commodity prices the way they are."
This autumn Congress will decide how much to expand conservation programs and whether to keep the swampbusters protection in tact. The farm bill written by the House Agriculture Committee would allow farmers to drain their wetlands again and still be eligible for nearly all federal subsidies. While the lawmakers say the current provision is too strict, conservationists argue that when farmers ask for billions of dollars in subsidies taxpayers have the right to demand that wetlands be preserved. "We think the farm bill can continue this extraordinary partnership between farmers and conservationists," said Joseph Satrom of Ducks Unlimited, "but changes in the swampbuster program would have a devastating impact."The New York Times:
