From: bigbee@spydee.net
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 10:45:44 -0000
To: BiologicalBeekeeping@yahoogroups.com
Subject: FARM BILL + CONSERVATION ACT!

WASHINGTON, June 15 " A coalition of more than 100 environmental and
hunting organizations, from the Sierra Club to the National Rifle
Association, is trying to turn the measure that will set farm policy
for the coming years into the major conservation act of this Congress.

With the recently enacted $1.3 trillion tax cut squeezing out most
new spending programs, the conservationists are focusing on what is
typically known as the farm bill as their best bet for recovering
millions of acres of wetlands, prairies, grassland and forests and
protecting the wildlife that live on the land.

Few other bills offer both the money " $79 billion in new financing
over the next five years " and the assurance that the legislation
will become law. The bill pays for the subsidies that have for
decades underwritten farmers who grow major crops like corn, wheat,
rice and soybeans.

But in the last 15 years, since conservation programs were added to
the farm program, farmers have lined up for cash payments in return
for taking their land out of production and letting it return to the
wild.

Already, farmers have voluntarily set aside more than 35 million
acres as nature reserves and another million acres of wetlands as
part of the two major conservation programs supported by the farm
program. There is a backlog of farmers and ranchers who have applied
for $3.7 billion in payments for setting aside an additional 68
million acres, but the programs have run out of money.

Conservation and hunting groups support payments to farmers for
returning some of their acreage to a natural state because it not
only helps sustain wildlife but also helps farmers hold on to their
property. In addition, it slows the encroachment of suburbs into the
countryside.

"The conservation programs in the farm bill have really helped the
farmer hold the line against developers," said Susan Lamson of the
National Rifle Association, making points more often associated with
the Friends of the Earth.

The environmental and hunting groups are asking that a new farm bill
include money for the protection of another million acres of wetlands
and 10 million more acres of land through the conservation reserve
program. They are going up against the powerful farm and agribusiness
lobbies that have helped persuade Congress to keep increasing crop
subsidies, which last year reached a record $22 billion in commodity
payments to farmers.

Environmental groups argue that these subsidies encourage
overproduction of the major crops, which not only keeps prices flat
but also pollutes rivers and soil with chemicals.

"When farms go into overproduction you have dirty water and dirty
air," said Brett Hulsey of the Sierra Club. "With conservation
programs, you have clean water, reduced flooding and more open space."

In Congress, these environmentalists, as well as the hunting and
fishing groups, the so-called hooks-and- bullets crowd, have found
natural allies among senators and representatives from states where
farmers receive little of the $20 billion annual subsidies for the
major crops. More than 120 House members wrote to the Agriculture
Committee chairman this week asking for support for the conservation
programs.

"We could turn this farm bill into the great conservation bill of the
21st century," said Representative Ron Kind, Democrat of Wisconsin,
who is leading the movement in the House to rewrite the farm bill
with conservation as its centerpiece.

Congress has begun considering how to rewrite the farm bill, which
was last passed in 1996 as the Freedom to Farm Act. Representative
Larry Combest, Republican of Texas and chairman of the Agriculture
Committee, has concluded that the major commodity subsidy programs
should be more predictable, with farmers receiving less money when
their crops fetch higher prices. He has yet to recommend how much
money should go to conservation.

"This is a work in progress," said an aide to Mr. Combest. "When the
environmentalists discovered the farm bill, they made it trendy. Now
the conservation programs are more oriented to Eastern farmers. Mr.
Combest prefers the more traditional point of view of protecting soil
banks that would give more money to the Western areas."

That geographic split is evident throughout Congress. In the Senate,
a group of 43 Republican and Democratic senators from New England and
mid-Atlantic states have formed an informal caucus to support farm
conservation programs. Most of their farmers from Maine to Maryland
either grow vegetables and fruits or are dairy farmers and therefore
ineligible for the major commodity subsidy programs. But they can and
have taken advantage of the conservation programs.

In the current farm bill, conservation payments have become so
popular they rank third, behind payments for growing corn and wheat.
Over five years, government payments to corn farmers were $24.3
billion, to wheat farmers $13.2 billion and to conservation programs
$8.24 billion.

"In many parts of farm country, conservation is now the single most
important source of government assistance to agriculture, especially
for small and medium-size farms," said Ken Cook, president of
Environmental Working Group.

During the Republican revolution in which Newt Gingrich was House
speaker, the conservation programs were nearly lost. When the House
wrote the initial Freedom to Farm Act of 1996, the bill excluded
financing for conservation. But Representative Sherwood Boehlert,
Republican of New York, offered an amendment to reinstate the
programs, and the measure won by a vote of 372 to 37, establishing
the now classic divide between Eastern and Western farm states over
financing.

"Conservation used to be considered the purview of the Midwest and
its eroded soil," Mr. Boehlert said in an interview. "With the
expanded programs it has worked wonders for our Eastern farmers who
were on the edge."

With so much money at stake in the new revision of the farm bill, Mr.
Combest has vowed to present a new farm bill to the House by the end
of July, nearly a year in advance of the Senate. For their part, the
environmentalists in the House say they will offer legislation this
month to expand the conservation programs.

"Our competition is the commodity payments, and there is only so much
money in the bill," said Scott Sutherland of Ducks Unlimited, a
conservation group supported by hunters. "We want funding put back
for the wetlands and we know there are members of Congress who are
hunters and anglers who will want to preserve those wetlands."
_________________________________

Will this be BEE FRIENDLY?

Thanks,
Doc