Voluntary Programs Plowed Under

The few chronically underfunded federal conservation programs in place are inadequate to blunt the damage caused by federal policies that push farmers to plant their crops fencerow to fencerow. Between 1997 and 2009, the government paid Iowa farmers $2.76 billion to put conservation practices in place. It paid out six times as much ¾ $16.8 billion ¾ in income, production and insurance subsidies that encouraged maximum- intensity planting, not conservation. Across the Corn Belt, the gap was even greater ¾ $7.0 billion for conservation and $51.2 billion for income, production and insurance subsidies.⁵¹

Figure 13: Six times more subsidies for all-out production than conservation, 1997 to 2009.

In 2008 alone, the two most important conservation programs — the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) — spent $208.8 million and $19.6 million respectively in Iowa to help farmers implement good conservation practices. Farmers got 4.5 times more ¾ $1.03 billion ¾ in production-related subsidies. The same imbalance holds true across the Corn Belt. The region’s farmers got $3.1 billion in subsidies in 2008 — 5.3 times as much as the $522.7 million in CRP assistance and the $69.6 million in EQIP payments.⁵²

Congressional promises to increase funding for conservation have never been kept. These programs have been funded below the authorized levels every year since 2002. From 2002 to 2010, Congress fell $2.55 billion short of the conservation commitments made in the 2002 and 2008 farm bills. If funding cuts planned for 2011 go through, the appropriations will be more than $1 billion short.⁵³

Not coincidentally, there have been significant cuts in the NRCS staff that provides the technical expertise needed to produce effective conservation plans and ensure that the prescribed practices are properly implemented and maintained. Agency staffing declined by 8 percent between 1995 and 2009 despite a dramatic increase in the number, size and complexity of programs.⁵⁴