Farming and conservation go hand-in-hand to reach mutual goals. Conservation practices help farmers, ranchers and other landowners continue their traditional ways of life by protecting the natural resources and habitats that are vital for productive agricultural yields.

The United States has a long tradition of supporting conservation on private lands through federal agricultural policies. The 2007 Farm Bill presents an opportunity to continue and strengthen that tradition by supporting our nation’s farming and ranching livelihoods as well as protecting our natural resources.

Our Recommendations to Congress

The next Farm Bill will affect America's entire agricultural community as well as the many landscapes that we work to protect. The Nature Conservancy is working to ensure that conservation is fairly represented in the bill's re-authorization.

We recommend that Congress adopt the following measures to strengthen the 2007 Farm Bill:

1. Protect our farms, forests and natural areas.
   
2. Strengthen and expand programs to proactively address the threats of invasive species.
   
3. Target conservation funding to areas that can realize the greatest ecological benefits.
   
4. Safeguard our nation’s water.
   
5. Provide greater incentives to actively manage land for native species.
   
6. Encourage and expand U.S. Department of Agriculture efforts to establish meaningful measures to refine and improve conservation programs.
   
7. Increase resources to monitor compliance of existing conservation requirements.
   
8. Support research and measurements to better understand the impacts of climate change on crop and forest production.

Learn more about our recommendations. (PDF, 38 KB)

Why We Care

The Farm Bill can be a powerful conservation tool by strengthening existing programs that protect natural resources and in turn, support farming lifestyles. Many of the habitats that we work to conserve — such as grasslands, forests and wetlands — receive funding through Farm Bill programs.

Grasslands
Temperate grasslands are the least protected and most altered major habitat type in the world. This alteration is most pronounced in the Great Plains region, where over 8.4 million acres of native grassland in nine states were converted to cropland from 1982 to 1997. In 2002, The Conservancy successfully lobbied for the creation of the Grasslands Reserve Program in the Farm Bill to protect working grasslands from conversion to more intensive agriculture or development. 

Forests
The more than 600 million acres of forests in the United States provide important habitat for game and non-game wildlife, protect rivers and streams critical to downstream irrigation and drinking water supplies, and support timber and forest-products industries critical to many rural economies. But between 1982 and 2001, about 34 million acres of forests were lost to developed uses.

Wetlands
Wetlands provide critically important habitat for a wide diversity of plants and animals. They also provide society with a number of valuable ecosystem services, including reducing the severity of floods, filtering sediment and chemicals from run-off, recharging ground water, and providing recreational opportunities. More than one-half of the nation’s original wetlands have been drained and converted to other uses.

Threats such as conversion of agricultural and forest lands, invasive species, declining water resources and climate change impact farmers’ bottom lines. Funding through Farm Bill programs can help address these threats as well as conserving important habitats and natural resources.

Farm Bill picture credits  (top to bottom, left to right): ©Tim Lindenbaum/TNC (A combine harvesting on a family farm, on the banks of the Mackinaw River, Illinois). ©/Mark Godfrey/TNC (Graham Ginn, TNC Flint River Basin Program Director, talks with cotton farm workers on a farm that is scheduled to receive one of the first variable rate pivot irrigation systems near Albany, Georgia).