Congress has voted repeatedly to constrain spending under the Conservation Stewardship Program, created to pay farmers to make soil and water conservation a part of their daily operations. University of Illinois associate professor Jonathan Coppess, writing at the farmdoc daily blog, said the “incredible shrinking of CSP … may also serve as a warning” about stewardship funding in the 2023 farm bill.
Former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, as chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, authored the first USDA working lands program, named the Conservation Security Program in the 2002 farm bill. The legislation was revamped as the Conservation Stewardship Program in the 2008 farm bill. It began with a target of enrolling 12.8 million acres a year, lowered in the 2014 farm bill to 10 million acres a year and changed to a spending limit in the 2018 farm bill.
“Projections for CSP spending have fallen substantially,” said Coppess. “Consider that CBO had once projected that assistance to farmers for conservation stewardship would peak in fiscal year 2020 at $2.5 billion but [USDA] reported only $429 million in FY2020, just 17 percent of the projection.”
Lawmakers earmarked $20 billion for USDA conservation programs, including CSP, with an emphasis on climate mitigation, as part of the 2022 climate, health care and tax law. With farm groups wanting more money for commodity subsidies, there have been suggestions to redirect the climate funding.