Shift the focus to stewardship

Craft payments, penalties to reward conservation.

The rush to expand crop production to make biofuels threatens to erode decades of effort to improve soil and water quality across America.

But the ethanol-driven climb in commodity prices also presents a historic opportunity to shift the emphasis of farm payments from subsidizing crops to rewarding good stewardship. If taxpayer dollars once destined for crop price supports can be funneled to conservation instead, they would deliver a clear public good: improving water quality, preserving wildlife habitat and protecting the nation’s rich farmland for future generations.


Steered by Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, the 2002 farm bill started that shift. The 2007 farm bill, which will be debated by the House Agriculture Committee this week, should accelerate it.

Enticed by higher prices, farmers have planted 19 percent more corn this year than last. The prospect that farmers will plant marginal land to energy crops and abandon soil-replenishing crop rotations makes it all the more urgent that lawmakers write a farm bill encouraging – and in some instances requiring – conservation.

Des Moines Register