Dear editor,
Reconnecting conservation compliance and crop insurance has never been more important than now: the Senate and House agriculture committees are holding hearings to consider renewal of the Farm Bill, something that occurs every five years and has wide-ranging impact on the management of America’s privately owned lands.
Nearly every program in the Farm Bill, from conservation programs to direct payments, counter-cyclical payments, and marketing assistance loans requires conservation compliance. Conservation compliance seeks to discourage farmers from draining wetlands, and requires them to have a conservation plan for tilling highly erodible lands. Conservation compliance is not onerous, but it is a minimum threshold meant to help ensure that federal taxpayers are not subsidizing bad environmental practices. However, the federal crop insurance program, which has grown over the past decade and a half to include more than 80 percent of cropped acres, requires no conservation compliance. This is a policy oversight that should be remedied in the next Farm Bill.
Wetlands and highly erodible lands that are prevalent in Kansas must be protected from conversion to croplands in order to sustain water quality, reduce soil erosion, flood control and conserve critical fish and wildlife habitat. Including a conservation compliance measure with crop insurance does not prevent Kansas farmers from achieving their production goals, but it does discourage the conversion of important privately owned lands to croplands and helps promote conservation-minded management practices on highly erodible lands.
The USDA estimates that without compliance requirements, 14 million acres of highly erodible lands and up to 3.3 million acres of wetlands in the United States could be plowed into production. Crop insurance provides a guaranteed revenue level for every insured acre — irrespective of whether those acres are fit for crop production — potentially incentivizing conversion of even the most sensitive acres into croplands. Compliance requirements will help safeguard the tremendous investment of American tax dollars in crop insurance from unnecessarily damaging the environment and harming the long-term viability of our food supply.
Keeping American farmers in business is critical to the economy of the United States, so it is essential that we maintain a strong farm safety net. That safety net should also seek to promote farm practices that conserve Kansas water, land, fish and wildlife. Private lands provide benefits to all Kansans, and re-linking conservation compliance with crop insurance is one common sense way to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent in the wisest way possible.
Jerry Swanson, Elsmore,
Landowner, farmer and outdoorsman
