CONTACT: Ferd Hoefner, Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, 202-547-5754

10/5/05
We are dismayed that Chairman Saxby Chambliss, after stating months ago that his farm bill budget cut proposal would be even-handed, has decided to target conservation programs for a grossly disproportionate share of the cuts. Even more alarming, the Chairman has decided to single out the most important new farm program in a generation, the Conservation Security Program (CSP), for the bulk of the conservation cuts. We are urging the Senate Agriculture Committee to reject this proposal.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, conservation programs represent 8 percent of the five-year mandatory spending total under the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee, yet the chairman has targeted conservation for a third or $1.054 billion of the total budget cuts. Cuts of this magnitude are not even-handed and proportionate.

Within the conservation package of proposed cuts, 75 percent of the reductions would come out of the groundbreaking CSP. CSP is just one of the eight major mandatory farm bill conservation programs, and under current budget rules represents 12 percent of total mandatory conservation program spending.

Targeted for smaller cuts in the Chairman’s package are the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). The Chairman’s package would restore spending levels for the Conservation Reserve Program and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program in 2011, one year outside the 5-year scoring window, but would lock the CSP cuts in place for a full 10 years. Over 10 years, then, CSP is targeted by the Chairman for 83 percent of the total conservation cuts.

The Chairman’s proposed $821 million, 5-year cut to the CSP, if enacted, would force USDA to shift from its current plan to allow each watershed to participate in the program once every eight years to something approaching once every twelve years—or approximately once every two farm bill cycles. No other federal farm or conservation program has ever been subjected to such an absurd arrangement.

The nation’s conservation farmers are tired of waiting for a farm program that works for them. The Committee should reverse the Chairman’s decision to single them out to bear the brunt of his budget cut package.

The Conservation Security Program is a comprehensive stewardship incentives program that provides financial and technical assistance to farmers and ranchers to reward them for investments of labor, management, and capital aimed at fostering healthy, productive, and non-eroding soils, clean air and water, energy savings, wildlife habitat, and ecosystem restorations. Unlike the U.S. commodity programs, which are under attack in the WTO, the CSP is a trade rule-compliant “green box” program aimed not at increasing production but rather at maximizing long-term environmental benefits.

The Sustainable Agriculture Coalition represents grassroots farm, rural, and conservation organizations from across the country that advocate for public policies supporting the long term economic and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources and rural communities. The Land Stewardship Project is a member of the Coalition.

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