Busting the CRP-high grain prices, bakers,pheasants, and Ducks Unlimited

[underpants]

Busting the CRP
Taxpayers spent $35 billion on the Conservation Reserve Program. But once-in-a-lifetime grain prices put that ground into play--and soil-saving gains at risk.


High prices will push more acres out of the CRP. Iowa State suggests that, short of an overhaul, 20 million acres may exit the program over the next 10 years. That's more than half of the entire CRP.

That would gut the 34.6-million-acre program. But then, Washington didn't buy this land; it only rented it. Planting the CRP is motivated by market forces—big demand at home for food and feed, a booming renewable fuels industry and a depressed dollar that lowers the cost of U.S. exports.

Three cropping seasons ago, Talley was getting $1.65 for corn and $4.50 for soybeans. "The CRP made a lot more sense," he says. Not today.

The CRP has cut soil erosion by 450 million tons a year, keeping sediment, fertilizers and pesticides out of waterways and water supplies. Pheasant populations are up 22%. Two million more ducks take wing every fall than would have without the program. The CRP has increased outdoor spending in the U.S. by $300 million a year, and it brings $39 million a year to landowners who offer hunting and recreational access to their land.

But for some, those benefits are going away. The Prairie Pothole region (download map as a PDF file) is ground zero to Dave Nomsen's fears. As contracts ended last fall, the CRP in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas took a million-acre hit. And another 600,000 acres may disappear this fall.
http://www.progressivefarmer.com/farmer/magazine/pdf/prairie.pdf
"Returning to fencerow-to-fencerow production helps no one," says Nomsen, Pheasants Forever's vice president of governmental affairs.

That's right, bakers, not bankers. In what must be a rare concern for farm policy, American bakers are calling for a 9-million-acre cut in the CRP to lower wheat prices. It is stranger still that the National Cattlemen's Association joined them.

"Two months ago I would never have imagined that American bakers would be pushing against the biggest conservation program in history," says Neil Shader, spokesman for Ducks Unlimited.

These are strange days. Concern for the CRP is pitting birds against fuel and fowl against food. "If you want to talk about pheasants, you have to talk about ethanol," Nomsen says.

There is that. Congress has mandated that 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol be blended into the nation's fuel supply by 2022. Today, 147 plants produce 8.5 billion gallons. An additional 61 facilities—new plants and expansions—will add 5.1 billion gallons of ethanol to the supply.

Ducks Unlimited argues that all corn, soybeans and wheat have a cost: Insurance costs and disaster payments rise on marginal ground.

USDA itself may have increased that risk, say Bruce Babcock and Chad Hart, Iowa State University economists.

Two years ago, USDA saw that CRP contracts were soon set to expire on 28 million acres. To head off a potential flood of acreage withdrawals, the agency offered a re-enrollment extension program (REX). As a result, 23 million acres were re-enrolled for varying lengths of time. Landowners received brand-new 10- and 15-year contracts for the most highly sensitive ground.


http://www.progressivefarmer.com/tabid/1587/Default.aspx

[jody]

1. Thanks for posting the article. I've sent it to my friends who hunt. n/t

[underpants]

2. This is a remarkable 'Bubba's to Birkenstocks' kind of thing

Well at least we are conditioned to think that enviros and hunters etc don't get along but in fact they are generally the same people.

Very interesting read I had at the doctor's office so I thought I would share.

[jody]

3. I had a LTTE published a few years back in which I argued that hunters & fisher-persons had more in

common with those out to save the environment than either side wished to acknowledge.

If both sides could just work together, the combined impact on congress would be phenomenal.

For the record, I'm active in both groups and I'm appalled at the hostility between them.

That's sad because there are divisive, polarizing issues for which compromise between extreme views is not possible, e.g. abortion.

IMO environmental issues may be divisive but they are not polarizing.

[underpants]

4. The public land use forums at the end of the Clinton administration

perfect examples of the coalition of bubbas birkenstocks splunkers mountian bikers hikers birders naturalists etc.

Over 10 million opinions on land use and management gathered from public meetings, online town halls, emails, letters etc. and across the board they came up with reasoned informed plan to manage the public trusts of land. Including some logging and management by timber companies.

As soon as Cheney got in office they reversed it. Of course the timber companies had tried to coerce and wow the locals with power points but they were shouted (literally from what I have read) out of meetings to they devised a plan to do nothing and cry foul when the new policy was announced. Cheney made things right for them of course.

[jody]

5. I neglected to say I had lunch at Millie's, 2603 East Main St last month. An interesting place.

:hi:

[underpants]

6. Cool!

Yes interesting. We don't go there very often.

[Hannah Bell]

7. i don't get the freak out. crp holds farmland in reserve, so it's not

built on or subdivided. if there's an actual food shortage, it comes out of reserve. seems it's working as it should, if the recent price rises signal shortage. (i don't think they do, but that's another matter).