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Congress Should Reward Farmers Who Are Good Stewards
Oklahoma is facing its worst drought since the Dust Bowl. A historic drought is also gripping Texas and surrounding southern states. Floods have ravaged America’s heartland, and we’re discovering unsustainable levels of soil erosion in Corn Belt states. On a larger scale, we see an alarming loss of crop and livestock biodiversity, a decline of bees and other pollinators, and expanding ocean dead-zones. Now more than ever, our nation should promote agricultural conservation measures and sustainable farming systems.
But Congress is threatening once again to slash the only programs that support farmers who protect our water, soil, and the biodiversity on which our nation’s productivity depends.
The timing could not be worse.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, a variety of US Department of Agriculture-supported conservation practices, requirements, and incentives were effective in reversing high levels of soil erosion. In recent years, relatively high soy and corn prices have given farmers incentive to expand planting onto marginal lands. The promise of high profits, and a perverse federal commodity subsidy system that rewards intensive mono-cropping, is just too good to resist. New research by scientists at Iowa State University finds that topsoil in some locations is disappearing 10 to 50 times faster than it can be replaced – and severe rainstorms are playing a large role in the increasing erosion. Erosion and polluted runoff on farmland washes away soils, fertilizers, pesticides and manure. In the Midwest, this runoff will eventually be discharged into the Mississippi River.
Cutting modest farm conservation programs today is reckless and irresponsible. It is unfair to farmers, to future generations, and is bad for the long-term economic health of our nation.
This week the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) is joining with organizations representing millions of Americans committed to the conservation of our water, air, land, productive soils, oceans, fish and wildlife, and the industries and rural communities these resources support. Together, we will ask the Senate to say “NO” to these short-sighted cuts.
The extreme cuts target programs that have helped farmers, ranchers, and private forest landowners to voluntarily protect and restore natural habitat on millions of acres and reduce soil erosion and other impacts of farming. The Conservation Stewardship Program, Environmental Quality Incentives Program, and Wetlands Reserve Program are already oversubscribed with a long waiting list of farmers wanting to implement conservation systems. Indeed, demand for enrollment in these programs routinely exceeds the funds available, even without any cuts. There are over 1,000,000 acres waiting to be enrolled in the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP), and in 2010 alone, the program helped to restore 120,000 acres of wetlands. Applications for the Conservation Stewardship Program and Environmental Quality Incentives Program often outstrip available funds by two to three times.
Conservation spending has had tremendous success on a very limited budget. In particular, spending on protecting natural resources produces a substantial number of jobs and economic opportunities across the US; just ask the fishing store owners and bed and breakfast owners in western Wisconsin who depend on clean streams to attract over $1.1 billion annually in the region.
Washington, DC is understandably focused on efforts to address the budget deficit. But so far they have overlooked spending on commodity programs as a target for cuts. Despite comparativly high farm income, we continue to spend $5 billion a year on direct payments for farmers and landowners without regard to need or even crop price levels.
If you want to protect our natural resources for future generations, now is the time to weigh in. Unfairly slashing conservation programs a second time, while completely ignoring outdated subsidies and abuse, is foolish policy and exceedingly unwise.
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14 Comments so far
Show AllUsing gm technology and herbicides makes it easier for me to no-til all my farm acres. This helps keep the soil in place. I have 3 acres in a government program where I have seeded native grasses along my creek. This helps keep soil and chemicals out of the watershed. This is a worthwhile program. We could also mandate by law that farmers must protect streams in this way, but without any remuneration.
Alright then! Let's hear it for gm technology and herbicides! Obviously, there's nothing but upsides to drenching the soil with Roundup to make no-til easier.
I really don't want to jump on Greg R, who is actually doing the work, but his bland statement has the smell of hasbarah about it.
Why should the government (us) pay to keep chemicals out of the watershed? No one should be allowed to poison others, period. The people who make and use these chemicals should be responsible. Can't do it? Too expensive? Then don't use the chemicals.
Yes, farmers work hard but that's no reason to be able to make a living by shifting your costs to others.
Sight unseen, it is unclear why GM crops or herbicide would help your no-till practices or why there might not be a better solution, since no-till farming is usually practiced without either. The native grasses sound like a wonderful thing and likely represent a significant investment of resources on your part, but it is not clear why this is not an action that might be judged separately from the herbicide use, as in "the grasses help; the herbicide does not,"--or perhaps otherwise.
I do not mean to suggest that what you write is not possible, but this does raise questions. As I understand it, the problem with GM products is not that they are inherently worse than heirloom products in every single instance in every single condition. But it seems to me that two larger problems develop. I wonder how you, as a professional, feel about these.
There are a set of weaknesses that they share with so-called "Green Revolution" hybrids: they are apparently have little genetic variation and are therefore poorly resistant to certain problems.
Per current law, Monsanto owns certain DNA sequences in crop grown from their GM seed (as do other GM companies, though Monsanto owns far more than anyone, apparently). Since many of the plants grown from such seed spread DNA-bearing pollen to the winds, these sequences pollinate other plants, most of them likely on the land of Monsanto's client, but others on other land.
Why does this not constitute negligent damage of the property of another farmer? In cases where responsibility can be determined, why should Monsanto and their clients not be held liable? Certainly non-GM plants hybridize, and similar problems develop, but GM seeds are most typically designed so as to create sterile offspring. That represents a deliberate attempt on the part of GM companies to destroy a benefit that normally accrues to farmers, and to destroy it for those who do not purchase their products.
I do not mean to suggest any very direct connection between your own individual practices and the wave of many thousands of suicides among farmers in India who cannot buy seed and cannot grow crops due to this crippling of their seeds, Monsanto's success in manipulating laws to avoid responsibility for such damages, and the farmers' resultant inability to raise crops. But this certainly seems like a larger factor by which to judge Monsanto and its products generally, since we cannot stop the wind from blowing and it is very hard to stop an international corporation from misleading potential clients.
Finally, I wonder what is to be done for consumers with allergies. Even were we to assume that GM products and the toxins frequently used with them are not more allergenic than other foods, having the protein signatures for one species in a product sold as being produced from another species creates problems for people with allergies. If a consumer finds that he or she has an allergy to wheat and not corn, but the allergens from the wheat can be reproduced in corn for whatever benefit a producer might derive, then the consumer cannot identify the allergen by identifying the species consumed. Even though a wheat might as easily be produced without the allergen, the consumer has no way to benefit unless such products are appropriately and reliably labelled.
Conditions change with each season and each piece of land, but it seems likely that anything that feeds Monsanto and other companies with similar practices will become an identifiable mistake shortly where it has not already.
Yes! And when those Monsanto GM seeds blow onto other farmer's lands, they sue and take the farm for copy write infringement (happening in Hawaii). We have no idea what the effects of Genetic Engineering humans or food will have on our off spring. If you went back in time and asked "Lucy" (3 million year old decedent of man) what she would want? She would have said more fur and a longer tail. How dare we presume to know more than nature.
Double post
GregR, While I appreciate your admission that it is folly to pay people not to farm the barriers beside waterways, your use of gm seed and chemicals only further a mechanized (oil based) food supply, corporate dominance, and the destruction of the environment. Obviously, you are a mono-cropper. Try getting off the seat of your tractor and work the soil. I produce food without either and just came back in the house after picking produce for tomarrow's market (sky is rumbling big time).
I'm a bi-cropper. We also have large vegetable and flower gardens that rarely get any pesticide treatment. These gardens are all hand work by myself and my wife. We don't even use a roto-tiller.
My apologies. I jumped to a conclusion.
Please see the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s (NSAC) work, and that of its members, on supporting new and existing farmers as they transition to sustainable and organic production practices. Recent research once again confirms that sustainable and organic farming methods when compared to conventional agriculture can result in the reduction of nitrogen pollution and other agricultural pollutants, while maintaining or increasing profitability. Additional studies also show that organic over conventional rotations show greater yield and steadily improved soil quality. http://sustainableagriculture.net/our-work/
In addition, the commodity program subsidies function quite differently from conservation programs. In fact, conservation programs often have to correct the problems caused by the imbalanced design of the commodity subsidies. For example, commodity programs predominantly encourage (reward) intensive row cropping, corn ethanol, and large-scale confined livestock production systems. This intensive mono cropping in one of the causes for increasing erosion in Corn Belt states. These styles of agro-industrial production are reliant on mechanization and large amounts of fossil fuels, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides.
Commodity subsidies – such as "direct payments" go to farmers and landowners without regard to need or even crop price levels. Conservation programs, on the other hand, place the incentives on environmental stewardship instead of overproduction and provide measurable positive outcomes for society.
Many beginning, socially disadvantaged, and/or sustainable and organic farmers would be unable to implement conservation systems without these programs.
Take for example Nolan Lenzen’s story – a farmer involved with our member the Land Stewardship Project. When Nolan and his wife Vanessa purchased an 140-acre farm in Minnesota, milk cows had not been on the land in four years and there was a lot of work needed to make it a Grade A certified organic dairy farm. With the help of cost-share money from USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) they were able to reverse soil damage on the former cornfields that had been cropped intensively, and establish a rotational pasture system while Nolan milked cows on his dad’s farm to bring in income.
Congress should avoid subsides for those practices that are detrimental or wasteful in this time of belt tightening. Spending should be thoughtfully directed in a manner that rewards good practices that provide public benefits.
Also check out the heart of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) -- its members: http://sustainableagriculture.net/about-us/members/
Does this article mean, by the title, that all farmers are good stewards and should be rewarded because they are famers or that because good stewards are farmers who should be rewarded?
In general, the government's 'farm subsidy' is anything but a program to reward good farmers for being good farmers, it is a money laundering scheme for rewarding the loyalty of those to the government. Much like the old roman generals and higher ups, who were rewarded with land and farms after their retirement from the military. But it goes deeper. Now athletes are similarly rewarded with farms and subsidies.
Were it intended to indicate that all farmers were good stewards, it would need a comma after farmers.
Congress is flashing the Greed Light
These are good programs and needed, but the article misses the much bigger needs. Stewardship subsidies alone fail, as the bigger problem is that for decades prices have usually been too low due to oversupply. This led to cheep feedgrains, which competed against grassfed livestock. So the economic problem at large works against resource conserving crop rotations. NSAC does not have any policies to address this much bigger proplem (historically multrillions and global). We need price floors and supply reduction programs on the bottom side of price and price ceilings and reserve supplies on top. (SEE National Family Farm Coalition's Food from Family Farms Act, and also IATP, Food and water Watch, here at Common Dreams).
To merely reduce subsidies without these changes is to risk losing the family farmers who can become the local food producers of the future. In fact, most subsidies were eliminated in 2008, unless prices fall even farther below the cost of production. That is, there were no cost of living increases. We're set up for a farm crisis much worse than what we had in the 1980s, because of these misunderstandings of farm subsidies. (Click my name for progressive documentation and comprehensive analysis.)