USA: February 20, 2003
WASHINGTON - U.S. farmers will earn more and more money for land, water and wildlife stewardship in coming years despite Congress' decision to raid conservation funding to pay for disaster aid, according to analysts.
Last week's vote to halve the innovative Conservation Security Program (CSP), which will send "green" payments to farmers who make environmental stewardship a daily activity, punctured lofty talk that conservation would become the centerpiece of the tens of billions of dollars that the federal government spends annually on its farm programs. The newly hatched CSP became a victim when lawmakers needed to offset $3.1 billion in disaster relief for livestock and crop losses in 2001 and 2002 cased by drought and severe weather. President George W. Bush is expected to sign an omnibus spending bill that includes the switch, possibly this week.
"We hit a detour," acknowledged Ferd Hoefner of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, a group which backs paying U.S. farmers to take better care of their land and water.
The idea of a "green" farm program "is still valid," he said, because Congress reduced funding but did not alter the makeup of CSP, which could be highly popular with farmers.
Exactly what the CSP will pay growers to do remains fuzzy.
The Agriculture Department is soliciting suggestions through mid-March from farm groups, conservation activists, environmental researchers and other experts on what activities should qualify for CSP payments. The USDA is expected to propose a set of rules for CSP later this year.
Boosting conservation payments is viewed by some lawmakers as crucial at a time when world trade talks are aiming at cutting trade-distorting conventional farm subsidies.
Green payments are a new way to provide government support to farmers although, in some views, lavish green payments could run afoul of World Trade Organization limits. Proponents say payments can be tailored to pass WTO scrutiny.
CONSERVATION AND FEDERAL DEFICIT
At first estimated to cost $2 billion, CSP recently was projected to spend $7 billion or more through 2011 if its payments were deemed entitlements - like crop subsidies - and to send payments of up to $50,000 a year to anyone who qualified. The White House wants to limit the cost of CSP to the original $2 billion.
Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin, the author of the CSP, won pledges from Senate leaders last week to ensure full funding of the program through 2007, when the entire farm law expires.
"We are all committed to working to find the first vehicle possible to correct this temporary setback to CSP," he said.
But even with the cuts, the CSP could be twice as large a program as thought when the 2002 farm law was enacted, said a House Agriculture Committee staff worker.
"You can hardly say conservation funding in the farm bill took a hit," the committee aide said. The CSP "will get a chance to operate at full speed" and will not run out of money before it expires in 2007, he added.
Some experts caution that the return of federal deficits will pressure conservation funding in Congress.
"We're going to see conservation money, especially CSP, whittled away" for other farm programs, said Otto Doering, a Purdue University farm analyst.
URBAN LAWMAKERS LIKE CONSERVATION FUNDING
Creation of the CSP was the latest step since 1985 to link American farmers and federal support for conservation.
Two existing USDA programs - the Conservation Reserve and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program - are popular in farm country and with conservation groups.
The Conservation Reserve pays farmers an annual rent to idle environmentally fragile land for 10 years. The other program shares the cost of limiting manure and farm run-off.
Support from environmental groups for farm stewardship programs is especially important because of the shrinking farm vote in the United States. The 2002 farm law, which created the CSP, was assembled as urban support waned for traditional subsidies for corn, cotton and other crops.
While farmland stewardship serves society's long-term interests by preserving natural resources, economist Darryl Ray of the University of Tennessee said the programs have an aspect of "looking for a different mechanism for subsidies" to combat low market prices for crops and livestock.
Under the farm law, crop subsidies still got the largest amount of federal farm money. But stewardship programs got the largest increase in percentage terms - 80 percent, or an additional $17.5 billion over 10 years.
Under a "green" system, federal payments to farmers would not rise during hard times, as under the current farm program. It was unclear if land values, which to some degree reflect the value of crop supports, would fall under a "green" program.
Story by Charles Abbott
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