The 2014 farm law reforged the link between federally subsidized crop insurance and land stewardship. With the 2018 farm bill on the legislative horizon, two dozen farm, wildlife, environmental, and conservation groups urged Congress to “maintain existing conservation compliance requirements as a prerequisite to receiving crop insurance, conservation and commodity program subsidies, and other farm bill benefits.”
In a seven-page joint statement, the groups asked for “a substantial increase in funding” for the conservation section of the bill. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the USDA’s soil, water, and wildlife conservation programs cost about $6 billion a year. They range from the green-payment Conservation Stewardship Program, the largest conservation program by acreage, to the land-idling Conservation Reserve Program, which, at $2 billion a year, is the most expensive program. Also included in the portfolio are cost-share programs to control runoff from fields and feedlots and a program that preserves farmland through easements.
Mainstream ag groups say their top priority in the new farm bill is a strong crop insurance program, the largest part of the farm safety net and estimated by the CBO to cost $8 billion annually in the coming decade. In the same span, crop and dairy subsidies are expected to cost slightly less than $6 billion a year. Ag groups chafe at limitations for access to federally subsidized crop insurance.
“The 2018 farm bill should include a crop insurance program that supports and encourages and does not hinder conservation,” said the joint statement. Among its supporters were the National Farmers Union, the second-largest U.S. farm group; the World Wildlife Fund; the National Wildlife Federation; the Environmental Defense Fund; the Natural Resources Defense Council; and the Soil and Water Conservation Society. The statement called for easier rules in the crop insurance program for cover crops.
“The need for more effective and better-resourced conservation programs is greater now than ever given the rising frequency and severity of extreme weather events,” said Alyssa Charney of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, a small-farm group that signed the statement.
In its highly detailed list of proposals, the joint statement called for a higher enrollment cap for the Conservation Reserve Program, which was limited to 24 million acres in a cost-cutting move in the 2014 farm law, and for maintaining the Conservation Stewardship Program at its current 80 million acres. Compared to the CRP, the CSP pays relatively small amounts per acre to producers to include conservation “practices” in their daily operations. The CSP faces a potentially large turnover in enrollment in 2019 as contracts expire.
Conservation, crop subsidy, and food stamp spending was cut as part of the 2014 farm law, while the crop insurance program was expanded.
The conservative Heritage Foundation has proposed large cuts in farm subsidies, crop insurance, and food stamps. A rebuttal released by Farm Policy Facts, whose members include farm groups and a trade group for crop insurance, says Heritage overstates the financial health of the farm sector and undervalues crop insurance as a risk management tool. “The risk in the business of agriculture is different from risk in other businesses,” says a summary of the report.