Public interest in our nation’s food and farming system has increased in recent years. To their credit, local citizens have built a movement that reaches coast-to-coast.
Authors such as Vandana Shiva, Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, and films such as Food Inc. and Fresh, have further ignited people’s interest in our food and farming system, as well as outlined clear failures in public policy related to agriculture.
Much of that criticism has fallen on public policies heavily shaped by agribusiness corporations of unprecedented size and profitability that prioritize the maximum production of a few favored commodities.
This excessive corporate influence in our food and farming system has led us down a path of waste and vulnerability. It has led to wasted tax dollars, environmental degradation and other economic costs like virtual monopolies in the meatpacking industry.
Alternatives to our current food and farm system have been difficult to advance. While buying local and having an improved understanding of where and who produces the food served on your table is part of the answer, it’s not enough. Federal policy and farm bills continue to dictate what happens on the land and what’s on our dinner plates.
Meaningful reform of U.S. farm policy has been an uphill battle. The new farm bill passed last year falls short in many respects. Yet one bright spot is the revamped and strengthened Conservation Stewardship Program, a building block to a new approach to farm policy.
The CSP is a voluntary program that rewards farmers and ranchers for managing their active farmland in a way that produces real and measurable conservation outcomes for society — healthy soil, clean water and wildlife habitat for example. The program is available to all farmers and all farmlands.
By providing support for maintaining and increasing soil and water stewardship on working farmland simply by measuring and providing payments based on positive conservation outcomes, the CSP represents a major positive shift in farm policy. It has the potential to affect the long-term sustainability and landscape diversity of our rural communities.
The U.S Department of Agriculture held the first-ever nationwide CSP sign-up for farmers through Sept. 30. Each year the USDA plans to enroll nearly 13 million acres of farmland nationwide. For comparison, the largest federal farm conservation program has roughly 32 million acres enrolled. So in just three years the CSP will eclipse that program in the number of acres covered.
Just like any new program, passage is one thing and successful implementation and usage is another. If farmers don’t sign up for the program, or if it is delivered in a piecemeal fashion, it is doomed.
As farmers ourselves, we want to encourage farmers across the nation to check out the new CSP. While the new conservation program may not work for all farmers, it could work for you. It will provide real dollars for doing what most farmers want to do — be good stewards of the land.
As a new way to support farmers, achieve greater conservation, and bring greater equity to farm programs, the CSP is part of the answer to making our food and farming system fairer, more resilient and more accountable.
Land Stewardship Project Federal Farm Policy Committee Members:
Bill Gorman — Goodhue, MN
Jeff Klinge — Farmersburg, IA
Greg Koether — McGregor, IA
Tom Nuessmeier — St. Peter, MN
Paul Sobocinski — Wabasso, MN
Dan Specht — McGregor, IA
Matt Urch — Viroqua, WI
Patty Wright — Prairie Farm, WI
Environment
Commentary: Stewardship program a step forward
Originally published in the October 2, 2009, print edition.
- Environment
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Back Roads: Preserve & protect
You don’t need a spotting scope to watch swans but the high quality scope allowed us to look right into the gold and black eyes of a drake ring neck duck preening himself in the lily pads.
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Commentary: Species safe even if world warms
Biologists are again predicting massive species losses as the world warms. But where are the corpses?
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Cover story: Forester helps landowners plan timber strategies
"We're finding a lot of landowners are mainly interested in wildlife habitat. They are interested in making their property better overall wildlife habitat. Income from the land is often not really a high priority for them. Recreation is their priority."
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Water, water everywhere -- Protecting agriculture's lifeline
With 10,000-plus lakes, the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi River, the large watershed of the Minnesota River and hundreds of lesser watersheds across the state, water is a daily ingredient in the life of Minnesota citizens. Zero in on Minnesota agriculture, and water is the life of the entire industry.
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Electricity used to control dust in livestock barns
"The EPI system is an easy, low-cost and highly reliable process for quickly improving the environment of any confinement housing facility."
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Residual value — How much is field trash worth?
Maybe we need to think more positively about trash. We’re talking trash as residue left on fields after harvest, or any time as a matter of fact. Does it have value?
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Better machinery makes continuous corn work
Equipment industry has responded to the movement toward more conservation tillage.
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FSA program specialist: CRP doing what was intended
With 3.4 million acres of Conservation Reserve Program contracts nationwide expiring in 2009, one logically wants to know: How much of this will be put back into crop production?
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Letter: National Farm Bureau ‘wrong-headed’ on cap and trade
The national Farm Bureau is wrong-headed regarding their stance on cap and trade. They are leading their membership to think that doing nothing about transitioning to a new energy economy is smart. It is not.
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Commentary: USDA misleads on farming’s climate future
The USDA seems to expect serious climate-related farming problems ahead, but the recent changes in global climate have been tiny — and in the “wrong” direction.
- More Environment Headlines
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Back Roads: Preserve & protect
