A combine harvests soybeans in Minnesota. Photo by Don Breneman.
Although it has been delayed by the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Congressional debate is still scheduled to begin this fall on legislation that will shape the nation’s farm policy for the next 5 to 10 years. Right now, the vast majority of subsidies go to farmers who grow commodity crops like corn and soybeans. That leaves out many small dairy and vegetable farmers throughout the Midwest. Environmentalists say a shift in farm program priorities would help those farmers and be a boon to the environment. In the first of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Losure visits a place that’s considered to be a success story in the nation’s conservation reserve program:
Transcript
Although it has been delayed by the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Congressional debate is still scheduled to begin this fall on legislation that will shape the nation’s farm policy for the next 5 to 10 years. Right now, the vast majority of subsidies go to farmers who grow commodity crops like corn and soybeans. That leaves out many small dairy and vegetable farmers throughout the Midwest. Environmentalists say a shift in farm program priorities would help those farmers and be a boon to the environment. In the first of a two-part
series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Losure visits a place that’s considered to be a success story in the nation’s conservation reserve program:
When cattle buyer Del Wehrspann was growing up on an Iowa farm in the 1950’s and 60’s, he saw the floodplain of the Des Moines River plowed up and planted in crops. Wehrspann is a lifelong conservationist and avid fisherman. He watched, dismayed, as the rivers fish and wildlife languished. So in 1968 he moved north to the Minnesota River valley, where the bottomland was still unplowed.
“But then we lived here not very long and I seen the exact same things taking place that had taken place in Iowa for me when I was a boy. That was draining every last wetland, tearing out every last fence, plowing everything that could be plowed for agricultural production.”
But these days as Wehrspann drives along the Minnesota River, he sees something he never expected in his lifetime – the river’s bottomland is being restored. It’s happening because Wehrspann and other citizens in the valley helped convince the state and federal government to begin what’s known as the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program. The program pays farmers an annual fee to take environmentally sensitive land out of cultivation. Now cattails, willows, and young cottonwoods grow on bottomland that just a few years ago was rows of corn and soybeans.
(sound of pontoon boat)
Already, Wehrspann has noticed changes on the river, where he often fishes from his pontoon boat. This spring when he floated past a field his neighbor has restored to a cattail marsh, the water running into the river was clear, not muddy with soil washing off a plowed field.
“This spring, the walleyes, they spawned. There was quite a few of them, the fish were here, nice fish. And for years, the Department of Natural Resources told us that we couldn’t have production, natural walleye production in this area because the water was too dirty.”
(Wahlspann putters downstream, past wood ducks, great blue herons,
Kingfishers, a black crowned night heron, and a soaring bald eagle.)
At a bend in the river, he beaches the boat and walks through land that was once diked and drained and is now a wetland. The mud is littered with freshwater mussel shells and crisscrossed with animal tracks.
“Like I say, this land is in production. It may not be in agricultural production, but as far as the deer, the other wildlife, the water quality, the aesthetics, it’s producing something. (Killdeer cry) that’s a killdeer.”
Under conservation programs similar to the one in the Minnesota River Valley, farmers nationwide have retired more than 33 million acres of environmentally sensitive land since 1985.
A farm bill amendment sponsored by Representatives Ron Kind of Wisconsin, Sherry Boehlert of New York and others would substantially increase spending for such programs to more than one quarter of the farm bill’s budget.
It’s not clear how well such proposals will fare…. but Tim Searchinger, senior attorney for the Washington DC based Environmental Defense, believes the time is right for a shift.
“It’s become increasingly obvious to people that these traditional farm programs leave out a large number of farmers. Nationwide, two-thirds of all the farmers don’t get any farm payments, and of the payments that are provided, two-thirds goes to the top largest ten percent.”
Searchinger says members of Congress from states like Wisconsin and New York where farmers receive relatively little in farm subsidies are starting to wake up to the inequities – especially as farm bill spending balloons.
He says congressmen from those states are increasingly supporting conservation programs. And in a recent boost for conservationists, a new report by the Bush administration proposes a similar shift from transitional subsidies to conservation programs.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Losure.