House Passes Major Farm Legislation

Never underestimate the political strangeness in an election year. Republicans support an environmental conservation bill that the White House opposes because it’s too costly and offers too much help to wealthy farmers.  High costs and wealth-friendliness have never been a problem for this White House in the past. Republicans are conservationists? Bipartisanship in the House? Curiouser and curiouser said Alice.

“Earmarks,” said the Cheshire Cat.

After passing the House by more than a two-thirds majority, the latest Farm Bill is off to the Senate, where it is expected to pass by a large majority. This legislation is particularly controversial because, as the AP reports

The farm bill, one of the last major pieces of legislation with a chance of becoming law this year, was a natural magnet for lawmakers trying to advance legislation that might not get considered as individual bills. Often, accepting earmarks is a way for party leaders to reward the rank-and-file and secure their votes on the overall bill; on the farm bill it was more a case of the powerful — Reid, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, Finance Committee Chairman Baucus and Judiciary Committee Chairman Leahy — using their influence to help their states or constituents.

There truly is something for everyone in here, and that means there may be aspects of this bill that will take their time coming to light.

Ray McCormick says that this bill is not the conservationist bill that it appears to be.

[The] Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) has been killed with multiple cuts by Colin Peterson. Sodsaver is dead, and CRP has big problems. This bill rewards farmers with crop insurance, and disaster payments for those that choose to break out native prairies in risky crop production areas, (the prairie pot-hole region) to grow commodity crops. The WRP program has been cut up so that no-one will enroll in the future and picks off current enrollments and makes them grandfathered-in so that current excepted WRP contracts (I know of three myself) are not now eligible. This Bill is good if you want production, not conservation.

The AP lists a few other special provisions:

• McConnell included a tax break for horse owners that would benefit horse farms in his state of Kentucky. His office asserted that the provision, which ensures that all race horses are depreciated over three years for tax purposes, regardless of when the horses start training, did not qualify as an earmark because it would affect tens of thousands of taxpayers in nearly every state. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates this would cost $126 million over 10 years.
• Senators from Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland succeeded in including $382 million for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Conservation Program.
• Baucus also got $1 million for a national sheep and goat industry improvement center.
• The bill authorizes $10 million a year for five years for a program backed by Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-Texas, that helps people in poor, rural areas find housing.
• It also authorizes funds for a drought mitigation center at the University of Nebraska, water systems for rural and native villages in Alaska and a congressional hunger center.

The National Association of Conservation Districts has supported the bill because it includes provisions for:

• Increases a financial commitment to working lands conservation programs, with increases to the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, the Conservation Stewardship Program and the Farmland Protection Program.
• Rewrites and streamlines the Conservation Stewardship Program (formerly the Conservation Security Program) to allow for nationwide participation. The elimination of the tier structure should ease program delivery and understanding by producers. New enrollment based on acreage providing for an annual enrollment of almost 13 million acres.
• Increases provisions for the eligibility of non-industrial private forest land in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, the Conservation Stewardship Program and the Farmland Protection Program.
• Provides funding for the Healthy Forest Reserve Program and maintains a strong Forestry Title.
• Provides funding to continue the Wetlands Reserve Program and the Grasslands Reserve Program. These programs will expire without the provisions and funding in this bill. WRP appraisal issues are also address in the bill.
• Although the CRP acreage cap is decreased to 32 million acres, the bill allows for continued enrollment through continuous sign-up and CREP.
• Defines technical assistance as technical services provided directly to farmers, ranchers, and other eligible entities, such as conservation planning, technical consultation, and assistance with design and implementation of conservation practices and technical infrastructure, including activities, processes, tools and agency functions needed to support delivery of technical services, such as technical standards, resource inventories, training, data and technology, monitoring and effects analysis. This definition should strengthen our efforts to support technical assistance and broad impact of what is included in technical assistance.
• Clarifies third party technical assistance (technical service providers) and allows for eligible payments for technical services such as conservation planning, education and outreach and assistance with design and implementation of conservation practices.
• Allows for “technical assistance only” contracts for producers for the purpose of planning, design or installation of an eligible practice under the conservation programs.
• Exempts Local Work Groups from the Federal Advisory Committee Act. This commitment to the locally led conservation program delivery process specifies local work groups in the law, and allows for greater transparency and participation in natural resources priority setting.