On Friday, March 16, a broad coalition of groups held a congressional briefing to present their views to Senate legislative aides on the issue of conservation compliance and Sodsaver. The briefing, entitled “Conserving Soil, Sod, and Wetlands in the 2012 Farm Bill: the Future of Conservation Compliance and Sodsaver,” examined the need to relink highly […]
Conservation, Energy & Environment
Regulatory Certainty Program Announced for Wildlife Habitat
Last week, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced a $33 million dollar partnership, Working Lands for Wildlife, which aims to protect wildlife habits through landowner conservation efforts. The program specifically targets conservation in priority areas that house seven species: the lesser prairie chicken, New England cottontail, Southwestern willow flycatcher, […]
Path to the 2012 Farm Bill: Senate Examines Commodity Programs
On March 15, the Senate Agriculture Committee held its final hearing in preparation for writing the 2012 Farm Bill. The hearing addressed risk management and commodity programs, and included testimony from farmers, crop insurance agents, commodity and farm groups, including: Michael Scuse, USDA Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services (Washington DC) Hope Hills, blueberry grower (Michigan) […]
House Holds Agriculture Appropriations Hearings
Earlier this month, the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee held a series of four hearings on the Obama Administration’s fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget request for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The hearings precede and are meant to inform the markup of a FY 2013 agriculture appropriations bill. The four hearings covered the President’s budget […]
Path to the 2012 Farm Bill: New Budget Baseline
An important step in the process of reauthorizing legislation that will include changes in mandatory spending, such as the farm bill, is establishing what the legislation would cost in the future if no changes were made and existing law were simply extended indefinitely. This is known as the budget “baseline” and becomes the yardstick that […]
Path to the 2012 Farm Bill: Mayors Outline Farm Bill Priorities in Letter to Congressional Agriculture Committee Leaders
On Tuesday, March 6th, the mayors of ten large cities–including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia–sent a letter to the chairs and ranking members of both Congressional Agriculture Committees regarding the 2012 Farm Bill. This letter emphasized the importance of a 2012 reauthorization and outlined the mayors’ priorities which included food security, public health, economic […]
Organic and High Tunnel Deadline Approaching
The second of three cut-off dates for organic, on-farm energy, and seasonal high tunnel cost share is coming up on March 30. The Organic, On-Farm Energy, and Seasonal High Tunnel Initiatives are offered by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service through its Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). NRCS will have three ranking periods in 2012 for […]
Beginning Farmers Tell Their Stories at Hill Briefing
This week, four beginning farmers and ranchers came to Washington, D.C. to participate in a congressional briefing on the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Opportunity Act (S.1850, H.R.3236). The briefing was hosted in the House by Reps. Tim Walz (D-MN-1) and Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE-1), and in the Senate by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA). The farmers came […]
New Environmental Benefits Scores for Conservation Activities within the CSP
Farmers and Ranchers who applied for enrollment in the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) for fiscal year (FY) 2012 can now determine how many points the various conservation activities offered under the program will be worth. USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), which implements the program, uses these point values to determine how each applicant ranks […]
Conservation Reserve Program Initiative for Wetlands and Grasslands
On Friday, March 2, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced a new Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) Initiative to preserve wetlands and grasslands through a continuous signup process for up to one million acres of land targeted in the three following area: • New Continuous Pollinator Practice – up to 100,000 acres A new continuous practice to permit producers […]
USDA Solicits Stakeholder Input on Agricultural Research
Last week, over 150 people attended a stakeholder listening session to provide feedback on ways to improve the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) – USDA’s largest competitive grants program that funds agricultural research, education, and extension projects. The session was hosted in Washington, D.C. at the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) – […]
Path to the 2012 Farm Bill: Senate Agriculture Committee Highlights Conservation Programs
In its “Path to the 2012 Farm Bill” series, NSAC gets into the details of the 2012 Farm Bill debate. On Tuesday, February 28, the Senate Agriculture Committee held its second Farm Bill hearing of the year. The hearing, entitled “Strengthening Conservation through the 2012 Farm Bill,” brought together three farmers, representatives from three national […]
Conservation Reserve Program’s Transition Incentive a Success
For Immediate Release February 29, 2012 Contact: Ferd Hoefner, Martha Noble 202-547-5754 Conservation Reserve Program’s Transition Incentive a Success Washington, DC February 29, 2012 – USDA’s Farm Service Agency this week announced it has allocated all the funding provided in the 2008 Farm Bill for the Conservation Reserve Program – Transition Incentives Program (CRP-TIP). The […]
USDA Announces Two New Conservation Initiatives
USDA recently announced two new initiatives, the Highly Erodible Cropland Initiative within the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the expanded On-Farm Energy Audits Initiative within the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). The Highly Erodible Cropland Initiative, which USDA Secretary Vilsack announced Tuesday, will enable producers to plant wildlife-friendly, long-term cover on cropland with an erodibility […]
President’s Proposed EPA Budget and Agriculture
President Obama’s FY2013 EPA budget proposal targets nutrient pollution, sedimentation and loss of shoreline vegetation as major water quality concerns, with a focus on agriculture as a major contributor to water degradation. To address this problem, the proposal directs USDA and EPA to increase their coordination using Clean Water Act Section 319 nonpoint source grants […]
Obama’s FY 2013 USDA Budget Request
On Monday, February 13, President Obama submitted his budget request to Congress for Fiscal Year (FY) 2013. For sustainable agriculture interests, the budget proposal is a mixed bag, with big cuts to working lands conservation programs, and both cuts and increases to discretionary spending accounts for sustainable agriculture programs. As far as the upcoming 2012 […]
ERS Publishes New Conservation Compliance Diagram
On Thursday, February 9, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (ERS) published a graphic that displays new information on farm program enrollment and conservation compliance. The Venn diagram shows the number of farms and farm acres that received conservation payments, direct commodity payments, and crop insurance in 2010, where those groups do and […]
Update: Agriculture & Animal Welfare
U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down California Law on Downed Animals Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in the case National Meat Association v. Harris that strikes down a California law with requirements for how slaughterhouses handle pigs that cannot walk, referred to in the law as “nonambulatory.” The California law requires slaughterhouses […]
EPA Releases Water Pollution Data Tool
The EPA has just released the Discharge Monitoring Report (DMR) Pollutant Loading Tool, an online database system that allows users to track polluters included in the database. Under the Clean Water Act, facilities with National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits report discharge data to the EPA. The EPA has pooled and classified some of this […]
FY 2012 CRP General Sign Up Coming Soon; Preliminary FY 2012 CSP Sign Up Results – UPDATED February 1, 2012
UPDATED February 1, 2012 Since our blog post on January 31, USDA announced that the FY 2012 Conservation Reserve Program general sign up period will be March 12-April 6. According to today’s press release, “contracts on an estimated 6.5 million acres will expire on Sept. 30, 2012” and this sign up will attempt to fill […]
USDA Taking Applications for Rural and Farm Energy Funding
On January 20, USDA announced that it is taking applications for Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) funding. For FY2012, USDA has $25.4 million in budget authority for REAP, which will support at least $12.5 million in grant funding and approximately $48.5 million in loan guarantees. USDA is taking applications for all components of the […]
New Regulatory Certainty Program Announced in Minnesota
On Tuesday, January 17, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson, Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton, and USDA’s Chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service Dave White met in Minnesota to announce a new partnership between the State, USDA, and EPA. Through the partnership, producers would receive immunity, also known as […]
USDA Announces CIG Funding for Water Quality Markets
On Friday, January 13, USDA announced the availability of $10 million for water quality credit trading projects through the Conservation Innovation Grants (CIG) program. According to USDA’s vision of water quality credit trading, “a producer who implements conservation practices to reduce water quality pollutants can also benefit by generating water quality market credits that could […]
EPA Releases Farm, Ranch & Rural Advisory Committee Recommendations
The EPA has released a Report from its Farm, Ranch & Rural Advisory Committee that was presented to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in December 2011. The Committee, as reconstituted under the Obama Administration, held its first meeting in September 2010. Administrator Jackson charged the Committee at the meeting with preparing recommendations regarding water quality issues […]