WASHINGTON, D.C. – New voices are assuming ascendancy in the debate over United States farm subsidies, with urban lawmakers pushing for increased conservation spending at the expense of crop funding.
With U.S. farm policy up for one of its periodic overhauls by Congress, conservation has taken centre stage in the fight for the billions of subsidy dollars.
Land, water and wildlife conservation – an issue appealing to city dwellers who value green vistas – is a leading topic in the latest farm bill debate.
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One of its biggest battles could be attempts to put more money into conservation at the expense of the traditional crop subsidies that dominate the $73.5 billion US bill. Grain, cotton and soybean growers would get an additional $45 billion over 10 years while conservation funding would rise by $16.5 billion.
“Conservation, as part of distributing farm payments more equitably, is gaining more resonance” with urban and suburban lawmakers, said a spokesperson for Rep. Ron Kind of Wisconsin.
The Democrat sponsors a “working lands stewardship” plan that plans to spend $3.5 billion a year to stop urban sprawl, idle fragile land and share the cost of reducing pesticide and manure runoff. He might have to raid crop subsidies to pay for it.
A conservation versus crops conflict has been building since 1985, when farmers first were required to practise conservation to qualify for crop supports. The 1990 and 1996 farm laws brought programs to protect wetlands and control pesticide and manure runoff, but farm subsidies remained paramount.
“In some ways, it’s part of a steady progression,” said Ferd Hoefner of the activist Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
Interest was heightened by impending regulation of feedlot runoff and concern about honouring World Trade Organization limits on trade-distorting farm subsidies.
This time, skeptics seek justification for why a large portion of agricultural funding is spent on subsidies for row-crop growers. The discussion was aided by $30.5 billion in farm bailouts since 1998, mostly to grain, cotton and oilseed farmers with some smaller amounts to minor crops.
Two-thirds of farm subsidies go to 10 percent of operators, chiefly in a dozen states, “giving larger producers downpayment money for their neighbour’s property,” said Mike Casey of the Environmental Working Group. It advocates larger conservation spending as a wiser investment.
Senate agriculture committee chair Tom Harkin said the 1996 farm law “opened up all of agriculture” to ask for subsidies.
Harkin elevated the prominence of conservation simply by becoming agriculture committee chair this spring, said consultant John Schnittker. The Iowa Democrat sponsored legislation to pay farmers up to $50,000 a year to make soil, water and wildlife conservation part of their day-to-day work.
In late July, Harkin said he was willing to discard lesser-needed programs to make room for potentially billions of dollars a year in “green” payments.
Hog, cattle and poultry producers, who receive no direct supports, applaud the idea of larger conservation funding. They calculate it will cost more than $12 billion over the next decade to satisfy new clean-air and clean-water regulations against pollution from medium and large-size feedlots.
Analysts saw pragmatic as well as philosophical reasons to put money into conservation.
“It just makes so much sense. We need an excuse for these (farm subsidy) programs,” said John Campbell, an agriculture department official in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
His comments touched on a common thought – farm-state lawmakers need allies to pass a farm bill. Welfare reform diminished the urban-rural coalition of the past although public feeding programs like food stamps and school lunch remain part of the farm bill.
“I think that folks believe that conservation is something they can sell to a larger constituency than farmers,” said economist Darryl Ray of the University of Tennessee.
