|
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
|
Backpedaling on conservation taxed the landscape and took a toll on wildlife. Of the 23 grassland bird species being closely monitored from 1966 to 1979, nearly half saw their numbers drop significantly. Populations of the lark bunting and grasshopper sparrow declined across the Midwest by more than 50 percent.
In 1982 alone, 3 billion tons of soil eroded across the nation, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
The recently formed Environmental Protection Agency had begun conducting studies on water quality and found that agricultural practices were contributing to the pollution of rivers and streams. Ironically, this environmental damage, paired with what became a glut of farmland in the 1980s, drove farmers and environmentalists to team up and create a lasting achievement for both conservation and agriculture in the form of the 1985 Farm Bill.
When the Farm Bill came up for reauthorization that year, a small coalition of environmental groups, spurred by the dismal state of habitat and water quality on farmlands, presented Congress with a pragmatic strategy that would change the future of conservation. Rather than lobby the House and Senate agriculture committees, which were stacked with farming interests and old-timers, to “save the birds,” the coalition unveiled a plan to save the government money.
For the previous 50 years, Congress had been paying farmers not to farm, as a way to control supply and prices. But these short-term “set-asides” were expensive. When Maureen Hinkle, a lobbyist for the National Audubon Society, and her cohorts realized that giving farmers a 10-year contract would be less expensive for taxpayers than annual payments, which varied from year to year, they thought, “bingo.”
“What sold the agricultural committees that day was not wildlife,” says Hinkle, who is now retired. “It was economics and production control.”
The bill created the Conservation Reserve Program, which took more than 36 million acres—an area about the size of Iowa—out of agricultural production. The bill also provided new regulatory teeth. Under the new “sodbuster” program, farmers of highly erodable land were required to implement a conservation plan within a decade or lose government subsidies. And a “swampbuster” program similarly penalized farmers who drained wetlands for cultivation.
“It was a major turning point,” says Stephen Lovejoy, an agricultural economist at Michigan State University. “Now we had legislation that said we want to protect not just soil productivity but wildlife habitat and water quality.”
Since then, the environmental protections afforded by the Farm Bill have continued to grow, along with an increasingly robust lobby for conservation. In 2002, riding on the tails of the largest budget surplus in history, Con-gress packed $74 billion, distributed over five years, into the Farm Bill, with $17 billion for conservation alone. The bill includes a host of initiatives that the Conservancy and other groups have helped to create in the past two decades, initiatives that have resulted in better protections for grasslands, wetlands, range and endangered species.
The country’s changing demographics—today farmers make up only 1 percent of the U.S. population—has inverted the political calculus that has driven the marriage of conservation and agriculture in the United States. Members of Congress from farming states now rely on environmental programs as a critical enticement for support from suburban and urban legislators.
“For conservation to succeed in this country, you need to occupy the center and work with the people on the land whose interests are affected by your goals,” says Jeff Eisenberg, a former policy advisor at the Conservancy who now works for the National Cattlemen’s Association. Sixty-one percent of the land in America is privately owned; anyone who cares about the environment can’t be content to bank on the country’s public lands as sufficient habitat reserves or bastions for cleaning water, air and soil.
Without partnerships with agricultural landowners, the environmental movement can’t thrive, says Eisenberg. “Whether or not you agree with farming practices, there is no denying the reach of the Farm Bill to positively affect landscapes.”
<< Previous 1 2 3 4 Next >>
Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Robb Kendrick/Aorora (Grain combines); Photo © Corbis (President Reagan).
