12/18/2003 Conservation Rules Will Limit New Program, Say Critics- 12/ 17 AgOnline

But the bottom line is that, thanks to the way Congress has voted so far in its appropriations process, the USDA will likely have only $41 million to spend on a nationwide program. And you probably won't be able to sign up until next summer or fall.

Time to comment

None of this is cast in stone yet. The rule announced by Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman today will be published in the Federal Register. Farm groups and other interested parties will have 60 days to comment and suggest changes. And the U.S. Senate won't vote on spending for the Fiscal 2004 until January 20 or later.

The Bush Administration clearly hopes that the new CSP rules will be greeted as good news.

"We have been diligently working on this thing since the passage of the Farm Bill in 2002," says Merlin Bartz, special assistant for natural resources and the environment at USDA. One reason for delays in the program is that Congress has changed the amount of money available for funding for CSP several times, Bartz said.

Cap on spending

Originally, the Farm Bill treated CSP like an entitlement program that, like commodity programs, had no cap on spending. Later Congress put a spending cap on the program. Currently, it would be capped at $41 million in the current, 2004 fiscal year but there would be no caps on spending in the following fiscal years—if the Senate approves the spending bill already passed by the House of Representatives.

Conservation groups hailed the announcement Wednesday as a step in the right direction.

"They missed the deadline by ten months, but at long last USDA is making progress in getting ready to reward farmers for conservation on working lands," said Loni Kemp, Senior Policy Analyst for the Minnesota Pro ject and Co-Chair of the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture. "Now that Congress has provided funding, farmers are anxious to learn the details about how they might use this new program. We look forward to working with USDA to finalize the rules."

Bartz, who spoke to members of the Iowa Corn Growers Association and Iowa Soybean Asociation at their annual meeting in Ames, Wednesday, said the USDA plans to give highest priority to CSP spending for farms in certain watersheds. It will not limit enrollment to any particular "tier" in the program. Spending on each eligible farm ramps up through three levels, or tiers, of conservation practices. Farms with the most conservation practices would be in Tier III and eligible for a maximum of $45,000 in cost sharing.

"We're actually going to allow folks to enroll and become eligible for all three tiers, but these will be in priority watershed areas," Bartz told Agriculture Online.

Bartz said that if all goes well, USDA will announce the signup schedule by next July.

Limited scope of program

Ferd Hoefner of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition in Washington, said that USDA is still limiting the scope of CSP more than Congress intended when it passed the Farm Bill.

CSP is supposed to be nationwide program, not one limited to certain watersheds that USDA hasn't identified, he said.

"Farmers won't even know which watersheds will be picked for who knows what political purposes," Hoefner told Agriculture Online. "They won't even know until sometime this summer if they have a chance to sign up."

Hoefner contends that if the Administration was serious about supporting CSP, USDA would allow some farmers to sign up last next year but concentrate on providing technical support to a larger number of farmers who could sign up when the cap on CSP spending ends next October 1.

"I think this is an indication, given what they've issued today, that they’re going to keep this as a small program limited to a number of watersheds," Hoefner said.

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