Conservationists claim victory on new farm bill

Wildlife and environmental groups are claiming victory for conservation practices in the new farm bill, where two of their top priorities made it into law. Farmers will be required to use good conservation practices on highly erodible lands and protect wetlands to qualify for crop insurance subsidies. And the law requires “sodsaver” protections to discourage farmers from plowing up native grasslands in several Plains and Midwest states. “I think we’re going to get a quite a lot of bang for the buck on conservation compliance and sodsaver,” said Bill Wenzel, agriculture program director for the Izaak Walton League of America. It wasn’t a total victory. The $57.6 billion in the farm bill for conservation programs over the next 10 years is a net reduction of $4 billion. Sodsaver will apply to only six states — North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana and Nebraska — instead of nationwide. And the cap on acres in the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to take environmentally sensitive land out of production, was lowered from 32 million to 24 million. Conservationists say, though, they expect a limited impact from the lowered cap. It’s only slightly below last year’s total acres in the program, as enrollment has fallen because of higher crop prices...more