Land Once Preserved Now Being Farmed

Workers bag ears of corn at a farmers' market in Iowa.

Congress, which sets aside money for the program, could either sweeten or dull the pot, depending upon what it does with the farm bill. Farmers who are now in the program receive, on average, about $49 per acre. The average enrolled farm in 2008 will receive $4,139. To compete with the market, those prices, some observers say, are too low. Both the House and Senate versions of the farm bill would increase conservation funding by close to $5 billion. But recent discussions suggest that those increases might be scaled back or even cut. Other reductions are being discussed as well. In 2002, when Congress wanted the conservation program to grow, it boosted the number of acres it would maximally support to 39.2 million. Now there is talk of whittling the cap back down to 32 million acres as Congress seeks to write a less costly bill that the Bush administration will sign. If farmers are already opting out, the thinking goes, why not give it less funding?

There is also chatter, much to the consternation of environmentalists, about bundling energy policy together with conservation efforts. The worries were amplified earlier this month when Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, speaking in Las Vegas, said, "I'd like to see all the [conservation reserve program] acres out there growing switch grass"—switch grass being a warm-season prairie grass that can be used to make ethanol. Environmentalists say the proposal is based not on data but wishful thinking. "The USDA is doing what it can to push corn production and biofuels," said National Wildlife Foundation Senior Program Manager Julie Sibbing. The thinking on conservation, she says, is, "Why not have your cake and eat it, too?"

Congress, Sibbing said, could do a number of things in the farm bill to make the conservation program stronger: set a floor—a minimum—for conservation acreage, rather than a cap; make information about payment rates, which tend to vary from state to state, more accessible to farmers; and keep those rates competitive. She and others emphasize the annual payback: hundreds of millions of pounds of nitrogen and phosphorous kept out of water; nearly half a billion tons of soil, critical to any farming operation, preserved; increases in vulnerable animal populations. "The way our farm subsidy system works, you could farm and lose your crop everywhere and still make money because there are so many safeguards," she said. "But without CRP, we won't have the space for wildlife."