AgriPulse Communication

An alliance of 88 national, state and local organizations wants to link conservation compliance and Farm Bill subsidies. Members of the Healthy Waters Coalition included the proposal in their outline of priorities to “better leverage agricultural resources to achieve real reductions of nutrient run-off.”

“Conservation compliance requirements should apply to commodity and crop and revenue insurance programs,” according to the coalition’s recommendations. “In addition, federal payments and premium subsidies should be linked in some manner to the goal of avoiding adverse water quality impacts from agricultural operations.”

National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition policy director Ferd Hoefner said this compliance program would be written to connect subsidies to conservation efforts in a “social contract” that dictates, in return for producer supports, “an expectation to take care of the land.” He acknowledged this will likely be a “major fight” in the drafting of the next Farm Bill (see Lucas story on Page One). The Farm Bill prepared for last year’s failed, deficit –reducing supercommittee did not include conservation compliance tied to crop insurance.

Izaak Walton League of America agriculture programs director Brad Redlin said drafting a new Farm Bill provides the ideal opportunity to tie conservation compliance to crop insurance subsidies. Describing it as “a covenant between taxpayer and producer,” a compliance agreement, he said, “doesn’t require additional investments; it will actually reduce them.”

In addition to their Farm Bill Conservation Title priorities, coalition members agree that over the next decade, the focus of the Clean Water Act should be on efforts to reduce amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus in waterways. The EPA attributes excess nutrients as a cause of impairments in half of damaged river and stream miles, half of impaired lake miles and more than half of impaired bay and estuarine miles, alliance members said.

Former Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer discussed a partnership between Bion Environmental Technologies and Kreider Farms. The project is being conducted at Ron Kreider’s operation, a third generation egg and dairy farm in Lancaster County, Penn. Instead of attempting to remove harmful nutrients from waterways after the damage, the project eliminates nutrients in the farm’s manure, before they can get to local water supplies.

“The Bion system allows nutrients to be removed right where they’re generated,” he said. “This allowed the opportunity for affordable management plans with processes to get the job done.” Schafer said he knows “first-hand” from his experience as a Secretary of Agriculture and North Dakota governor the challenge to maintain abundant, healthy water and to affordably find solutions. Schafer now serves as a member of Bion’s senior management team

“Agriculture production depends on good, clean, abundant, safe water supplies,” he said. “But government policies come at huge costs to local government entities. Taxpayers are being stretched thin.” Partnerships like the one between Kreider Farms and Bion are too uncommon, he said, because federal policies are addressing excessive nutrients after waterways are contaminated. USDA and EPA can facilitate state and local entities’ projects for reducing nutrients in the least expensive way, “if we design public policy that allows them to flourish.”

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