Ask Congress to Reject Cuts to Agricultural Conservation Programs

The majority of the nation’s lands are held privately, and how they are managed affects all of us.

Feeding ourselves and future generations demands the use of sustainable production systems on working agricultural lands.  The Environmental Quality Incentives (EQIP) Program and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) are two USDA programs that focus on helping farmers to improve practices on working farmland.

Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) is a green payments program.  It pays farmers to produce environmental benefits – a crop we can all harvest.  It is the only program that pays farmers for how they farm instead of what or how much they produce.  We think that’s what the next generation of farm programs should look like.  CSP rewards innovative stewardship practices and applies to the full spectrum of working agricultural lands, from cropland to pasture to rangeland to woodlots.  Farmers must meet high conservation standards to be eligible for CSP payments.

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) provides financial costs share and technical assistance to help farmers and ranchers implement conservation practices on working agricultural land.  In recent years EQIP has also provided cost share and technical assistance to organic farmers and to those transitioning to organic production.  Like CSP, EQIP helps build rural economic development.

USDA programs also protect wetlands and farmland.  Wetlands act as natural filters for sediments and nutrients that would otherwise end up in our watercourses.  Wetland destruction can impair water quality and increase flooding.  The Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) conserves critical wetlands by purchasing long-term or permanent easements to restore wetlands that have been farmed.  Farmland is being converted to development and other non-agricultural uses at an alarming rate.  USDA’s Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program helps keep our valuable agricultural lands in agriculture.

The House has proposed huge cuts to the programs like EQIP, CSP, WRP and FRPP – programs whose funding needs Congress already recognized in the 2008 Farm Bill and mandated should be met.  In addition to the $500 million cut this spring in the Fiscal Year 2011 appropriations process, the House has already voted to cut another $1 billion for FY12.  If the Senate rejects these cuts when they write their bill next Wednesday, they will set up a worthy debate with the House for later this year over final compromise funding levels for next year.

What you can do:

Please call your Senator today and urge them to reject the House budget cuts to conservation in the Fiscal Year 2012 appropriations bill.

The Message is Simple: “I am a constituent and I’m calling to urge Senator _________ to defend funding for conservation in the Fiscal Year 2012 appropriations bill to be voted on Wednesday.  The budget should not be balanced in a lop-sided attack on conservation programs and the natural resources that are the foundation of our nation’s prosperity.  Please vote against cuts to farm bill conservation programs.”

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