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May 2002 ** Farm Bill's Passage in Congress Will Hurt Wildlife and the Environment **
Since last year, Action Network members have sent over 100,000 messages to Congress in support of a Farm Bill that works better for the environment and family farmers. Unfortunately, despite the strong and growing support in Congress, the media, and the public for such reform, our collective efforts were not successful.
Instead of helping the environment and small farmers, the Farm Bill will boost subsidies for the biggest farmers while failing to make enough money available for conservation programs. Although it does provide increased funding for conservation, the bill allocates just 17% of overall farm spending to conservation, compared to 30% in the 1996 Farm Bill.
NEXT STEPS: Annual appropriations bills offer an opportunity to seek additional funding for conservation programs, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service will be holding public meetings on many of the conservation programs. Public input by Action Network members will be critical to ongoing efforts to make the nation's agriculture policies work better for the environment and family farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners.
For more information, visit http://www.privatelandstewardship.org
STATEMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE ON FARM BILL PASSAGE
(8 May, 2002 -- Washington) Environmental Defense today released the following statement from senior attorney Tim Searchinger on expected final passage of the farm bill conference report by the U.S. Senate.
"The farm bill represented a rare opportunity to reward farmers, ranchers and private forest landowners for taking steps to help the environment. Unfortunately, Congress decided instead to reward the nation's largest farmers for plowing up environmentally critical grasslands and woodlands to grow ever larger surpluses of feed grains, rice and cotton.
"Under the new law, only 18% of payments to farmers support conservation -- down from one-third in the last farm bill. And because Congress has failed to meet even current demand for U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) conservation spending, at least one-third of farmers and ranchers seeking USDA assistance to protect water quality and curb sprawl will continue to be rejected in the coming years.
"While the Senate-passed Farm bill strongly supported the most valuable conservation programs to protect crop and grasslands from sprawl, restore wetlands and enhance wildlife habitat, the bill approved by the Senate today disproportionately cuts funding for the most valuable programs. Some of the 'conservation' spending approved by the Senate today will actually harm the environment by funding the construction of huge manure lagoons and dams.
"The most significant environmental problem is that the bill provides huge incentives to plow up native grasslands, in part because a key reform to curtail these perverse incentives was surrendered by Senate negotiators. The result will be the loss of millions of acres of wildlife habitat and increased runoff of pollution into our rivers, lakes and bays. The increases in conservation spending are outweighed by the environmental threats posed by the unprecedented incentives to overproduce feed grains, rice and cotton. For every acre of wildlife habitat saved as a result of this farm bill, two or more acres of habitat will be destroyed.
"Reasonable limits on subsidies designed to protect small farmers were also deleted. As a result, a small number of large farmers in a handful of state will continue to receive most farm spending, while the vast majority of farmers will continue to receive little or no USDA assistance. Thanks to this farm bill, large farmers will also have unprecedented funds to swallow up their smaller neighbors."
