With farm income in a slump, South Dakota Sen. John Thune unveiled a short-term land-idling program to boost a farmer’s income for carrying out soil and water stewardship on marginal farmland. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), a small-farm group, said the idea “is worth looking at.”
A member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Thune said his Soil Health and Income Protection Program would be a voluntary income support with enrollment limited to 15 percent of a farm. Land would be idled for three to five years with a payment rate half of the rental payment in a county for land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve, which retires land for 10 years or more.
Thune said he will introduce a number of farm bill proposals in coming months. “The first proposal I’m unveiling would create a new voluntary farm bill program that would provide a short-term option to conserve acreage while protecting farm income,” he said.
“It’s a tool that we have not had in the tool box in a while,” said Ferd Hoefner on NSAC, who compared the approach to the annual land set-asides that were part of the farm program until the 1996 “Freedom to Farm” law. That law removed most federal controls on what farmers plant. A short-term land retirement would provide flexibility in meeting demand for food while providing some conservation benefits, he said. “Definitely, (we) are taking a very close look at it and likely to be favorable,” he said.
The 2014 farm law limited the Conservation Reserve to 24 million acres, down from its peak of 36.7 million acres in 2007.
At USDA’s Outlook Forum last week, analyst Dan Basse said worldwide plantings of corn, soybeans and wheat have climbed for six years in a row. “The market has to slow future seeding,” he said, because of a global over-supply. Plantings need to fall by 17-22 million acres over the next several years to bring stockpiles into line with demand but growers are loath to idle land and give up income.