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Oral Testimony Given by
Land Stewardship Project Member Dan Specht to the
U.S. Senate Agriculture, Nutrition & Forestry Committee
3/1/01
Washington, D.C. - Good morning, and thank you for this opportunity
to testify. My name is Dan Specht and I am a fourth generation eastern
Iowa farmer. Today it is my pleasure to testify on behalf of the Sustainable
Agriculture Coalition. I started farming in 1971 with my parents and
three brothers. I've been farming on my own since 1994 and now raise
crops and livestock on almost 700 acres. Most of my land is considered
highly erodible. My farm is just outside the Big Spring study area,
which you may have heard about. This was started as part of Iowa's Groundwater
Protection Act and has been studying the movement of nitrates into surface
and groundwater.
Although many of my friends and neighbors in recent years have been
forced to earn off-farm income and no longer raise livestock, I am actually
very optimistic about the future of agriculture. I am optimistic because
of I've been able to produce crops and livestock using low-cost methods
that are profitable and environmentally sound, and I have been able
to market those products with preserved identity through farmer-owned
organic marketing cooperatives. Besides raising organic soybeans, I've
also converted a large part of my farm to a system of grass-based beef
production called management intensive rotational grazing.
Despite my optimism, I am distressed at the barriers current farm policy
puts in front of farmers like myself who are trying to adopt methods
that are more environmentally sound and economically viable. I think
existing commodity programs have three fatal flaws.
First, if you were a farmer like myself who was making hay, grass and
small grains a big part of your rotation during the base-building days
of the 1980s, you're not eligible for AMTA payments on those acres.
The more land you planted into row crops then, the more money you qualify
for now. Because of my diversity, I now only receive AMTA payments on
a tiny fraction of corn base out of the 500 acres I own. Neighbors of
mine who farm similar land qualify for AMTA payments on nearly 100 percent
of their crop acres because they have such a high corn base. Doubling
AMTA payments has only doubled this inequity. Now LDPs are adding insult
to injury. Unlike AMTA, with its prospective planting flexibility, LDPs
flow only to program crops, creating further barriers to resource conservation
and environmental improvement. This policy-driven bias puts diversified,
conservation-oriented farmers in a competitive disadvantage in the land
market. How would you like to be put in my shoes and have to explain
to my landlord that because I was farming his farm in a soil conserving
rotation his farm isn't worth as much as it could have been with a larger
corn base?
The second fatal flaw is that the program now allows actual cash prices
for crops to fall below the cost of production. We now have the worst
of two worlds: we have no limits on production coupled with what amounts
to direct payments through LDPs that increase production even more.
This gives a competitive edge to industrial livestock producers who
buy the raw materials at less than the cost of production while the
farmer-feeder competitors have real production costs that have to be
paid.
The third fatal flaw is the program's lack of effective targeting to
family farm income, or even any effective payment limitation. The current
'sky's the limit' program exacerbates the first two problems, providing
a public subsidy for land concentration, reduced diversity, and continued
environmental problems.
These flaws mean we are losing the potential to capture many of the
societal benefits diverse crop and livestock farms can provide. I believe,
therefore, the first thing Congress needs to do in addressing conservation
in the farm bill is to take a hard look at farm programs and take serious
steps toward making them consistent with widely shared public support
for good stewardship. Incentives for overproduction and land consolidation
need to be greatly reduced, barriers to diversification need to be removed,
and real requirements for basic conservation need to be reinvigorated.
I have witnessed some of these resource and environmental benefits
firsthand on my own operation and I'd welcome any members of the Committee
to come out and see the improved wildlife habitat, erosion control and
water quality on my farm. Pheasant season is open in November, deer
season is December, turkeys April and May, and I'm always looking for
an excuse to go fishing -- we can probably find something to fish for
any month of the year. I'd like to list to you what the scientific community
is finding out about one sustainable farming system I'm using -- management
intensive rotational grazing.
The University of Minnesota has found that rotational grazing significantly
reduces the amount of sediment flowing into a waterway. One storm dumped
10 tons per acre of soil off of cropland but only 4 pounds per acre
from an adjacent grazing paddock. Minnesota researchers there have also
found that life in a stream degraded by overgrazing starts to recover
as it flows through a rotationally grazed area.
The University of Vermont has found that grass-based operations burn
25 to 40 percent less fuel than row-crop farms. University of Wisconsin
researchers recorded more than twice the number of nesting grassland
songbirds in rotational paddocks when compared to the same acreage of
continuously grazed pastures, and almost none in cropland.
Back to the nitrate issue -- drainage water flowing from row crop fields
has nitrate levels that are 30 to 50 times higher when compared with
fields planted in perennial plant systems like grass. This has major
implications as far as the Gulf of Mexico's hypoxia zone is concerned.
I encourage the Committee to read the article attached to my statement
for more details on the connection between farming in the Midwest and
fishing in the paradise of south Louisiana.
Grazing can also help us deal with some of our biggest human health
concerns. In 1998, the journal Science reported that replacing a bovine's
grain ration with as much as 40 percent forage can dramatically reduced
the threat of the deadly microbe E. coli 0157. Researchers have found
a substance in the meat and milk products of ruminant livestock called
CLA -- conjugated linoleic acid. Studies on CLA in both meat and milk
have shown it can help prevent and treat breast cancer and other malignant
growths while also reducing heart disease. The fascinating thing about
CLA is that what the animal eats controls concentrations of CLA in the
product. CLA in meat and milk from animals getting their entire diet
from grazing is five times more concentrated than milk from confined
grain fed animals.
Such research has the potential to create a huge demand for the products
of grass-based livestock. But if U.S. meat and milk producers are not
in a position to provide consumers with such products, I guarantee you
Argentina, Australia and New Zealand will dominate the market. Just
as worldwide demand for GMO-free crops is sending food buyers to other
countries, the U.S. is at risk of losing customers for grass-based livestock
because of our push toward row crop monocultures and large-scale confinement
livestock. This is not going to be only a case of losing world markets;
we will lose our own markets in the U.S. to foreign products if we don't
wake up.
Rotational grazing is just one innovative farming method that produces
food in a manner society wants to support. Other cutting edge work being
done by sustainable farmers includes cover cropping, diverse rotations,
biological pest control, deep bedded livestock systems, composting of
manure, and on and on. These innovative practices show a lot of promise
and deserve our support.
That's why I'm excited by the Conservation Security Act. I like this
proposed legislation because it would reward farmers for the resource
and environmental benefits they actually produce, and not just for putting
in place certain pre-approved best management practices and structures.
That means the people who are already practicing stewardship farming
will be on the same footing as commodity producers or those that are
making transitions. This kind of legislation shows we are serious about
rewarding the kind of innovation that's good for the land, farmers and
taxpayers.
The Conservation Security Act marks an important shift in U.S. agricultural
conservation and income support efforts. Rather than retiring land from
production, this program emphasizes the environmental benefits that
sustainable management of working farmland can provide. Instead of paying
for production at any cost, it would reward farmers for producing clean
air and water, improving soils, storing carbon, restoring habitat, and
providing other public goods. All regions of the country and all commodities
would be equal participants, rather than having the government pick
winners and losers. The incentive payments would be substantially higher
than previous conservation programs, but within a strict payment cap
that targets benefits. I'm no expert, but I'm also told it would be
in full accord with world trade principles. There are many other aspects
of the bill which have great merit:
* All who qualify to participate in the program will be able to do
so, without preset limitations on the number of acres or the amount
of funding available.
* It is geared to environmental results and also provides for monitoring
and evaluation grants to assess progress at the farm, watershed, and
regional levels.
* It recognizes and rewards innovative on-farm research and demonstration
and encourages whole farm planning.
* It has graduated participation options, with a premium for more far-reaching
sustainable system approaches.
* It provides payment bonuses when most producers in a given small
watershed jointly participate.
* It provides direct funding for monitoring and evaluation to help
determine program success and future direction. This will be critical
to building a cost-effective program that achieves farm and environmental
goals and maintains strong public support.
I would recommend a small addition to the bill that would direct USDA
to take all necessary steps to ensure that organic farming plans developed
under the new national organic program are able also to meet the terms
of the Conservation Security Program. Let me close my testimony by supporting
renewal and enhancement of existing conservation programs in the next
farm bill. In particular, I would like to express strong support the
Wetlands Reserve Program and encourage its renewal at no less than 250,000
acres per year. Finally, I encourage you to support the buffer initiative.
Partial field enrollment of special practices is smart conservation.
Inclusion of a CRP buffer acreage goal of no less than 5 million acres
would be a good thing to write into the farm bill.
Thank you for the opportunity to present these views. I would be happy
to try to answer any questions you may have.
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