Building a better farm subsidy:Sen should insist on adequate funds for CSP

[lindisfarne]

Published: June 20, 2006
Building a better farm subsidy
Senate should insist on adequate funds for the CSP.
http://www.startribune.com/561/story/502849.html

American farmers have always operated with twin goals -- to produce food for consumers and to protect the land for posterity. But those impulses sometimes come into conflict, especially when federal crop subsidies encourage farmers to plow too many acres and use too many chemicals.
About five years ago, Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., brought those goals into alignment by devising a new form of subsidy that would reward farmers who grow a crop while using the best environmental practices. The Conservation Security Program (CSP), enacted in the 2002 farm bill, made it possible for Congress to put a safety net under the risky business of farming while also producing public benefits in the form of clean water, soil conservation and healthier wildlife habitat.

CSP represented an important new chapter in the history of federal farm policy, but Congress has never funded it at the level that lawmakers intended or a level sufficient to accommodate all the farmers who want to enroll. This week, as part of the annual summer appropriations process, the U.S. Senate can begin correcting that deficiency by setting a higher bar than the House and the Bush administration have set.

Harkin has complained periodically about funding for his brainchild, and last week brought fresh evidence that he's right. Releasing statistics for the 2006 enrollment period, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that it had to reject almost half of the 8,000 farmers who applied for CSP -- even though it had already cut the number of eligible regions almost by half and even though all the applying farmers had adopted proven conservation practices such as low-till cultivation and reduced use of chemicals.

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