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Field & Stream, January 1995, Conservation by George Reiger
CRP - A BETTER WAY?
This program has been highly beneficial for wildlife. Now, if there was a way to have the benefits without the paperwork...
THE CONSERVATION RESERVE Program (CRP) is arguably the nation's best wildlife initiative in over half a century. Over the past ten years, since CRP was born as part of the Food Security Act of 1985 (that year's farm bill), 36.4 million acres of highly erodible land have been taken out of agricultural production. Because such acreage often adjoins wetlands or streams, CRP has produced some notable increases in wildlife.
- Minnesota's prairie chicken population has quadrupled over the past ten years, especially on CRP acreage.
- North Dakota's pheasant population has doubled in just the past three years, again mostly on CRP land.
- The highly beneficial western kingbird is increasing throughout its range, but most especially on CRP land.
- Waterfowl production soared last year across the northern tier of states from Montana to Minnesota, as many previously dry or diminished wetlands surrounded by CRP buffer strips received ample rainfall at last.
Prior to CRP, 6 percent of the nation's most susceptible cropland was the source of 43 percent of the nation's soil erosion. Nearly one-third of that 6 percent has now been taken out of agricultural production by CRP. In its place, perennial grasses, shrubs, and trees (especially in the Southeastern U.S.) have been planted.
The nation's annual savings in topsoil are an estimated 675 million tons. In Montana alone, where 2.8 million acres of farm and range land are enrolled in CRP, the average annual soil savings are 13 tons per acre. Not coincidentally, Montana has seen its annual pheasant harvest grow from approximately 43,000 birds in 1986 to almost 121,000 in 1992.
In Montana as elsewhere, the greatest wildlife beneficiaries of CRP seem to be ducks. In the prairie pothole region of the nation, four times as many acres are now in CRP as in state or federally managed wetlands. Jeff Herbert, Montana's statewide waterfowl coordinator, says that "in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, we feel CRP lands may be contributing as many as a million additional ducks to the fall flight each year."
Biologists elsewhere, however, aren't as enthusiastic. The Wildlife Society, the professional association of wildlife biologists, found that seven of the fifteen Southern state conservation administrators it surveyed believe that CRP is detrimental to wildlife because most of the CRP land in their states was devoted to monocultures of pine and, introduced cool-season grasses with little food or cover value for small game and songbirds. Indeed, only two of the fifteen states surveyed had conservation department personnel directly involved in writing CRP plans, and ten state administrators felt that landowners were not made fully aware of all CRP options by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
In response to the question, "Do you favor continuation of CRP in its present form?" six Southern state administrators said "yes," five said "no," and four answered "no comment" or did not respond. Hardly a ringing endorsement for a very expensive subsidy.
Just how expensive?
It all depends on how you look at it. Compared with other farm subsidies, its relatively modest. American taxpayers spend over $46 million daily or $16.8 billion annually on subsidies to support farmer incomes. Since the most successful farmers, Eke the most successful businessmen, are incorporated, 90 percent of that $16.8 billion annual bill goes to just one-fifth of the nation's largest farms. Seen in that, light, the $2 billion annual bill for CRP, which favors more marginal farmers with a greater proportion of highly erodible land, is a fairer form of welfare.
Furthermore, according to a bulletin published by Pheasants Forever, CRP provides erosion control worth 613 billion per year, water quality benefits amounting to $3.1 billion per year, wind erosion reduction valued at $400 million per year, and small game, waterfowl, and non-game wildlife benefits of $8.6 billion per year. Additional savings of approximately 62 billion per year may be reckoned after subtracting the commodity price and other agricultural subsidies that would have been paid in lieu of CRP.
In a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service study in six states (Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, the Dakotas, and Montana) comparing CRP with other agricultural payments, Arnie Kruse found that while "in three of the states, CRP turned out to be slightly more expensive, in the other three [the program was] slightly less expensive. Overall, the costs of having the land in CRP were $13 million lower than the costs to the government of having the land in farm production.
"What it all boils down to," concludes Kruse, is that "CRP is basically a cost-neutral program. Critics of the program say we don't have the money to continue it, but it's money we're going to spend on farm programs one way or another. Why not spend it in the way that controls erosion, builds wildlife populations, and provides outdoor recreation?"
THE FLAW IN KRUSE'S LOGIC IS his--and many rural Americans'- assumption that Congress will go on spending tens of billions of dollars annually" on farm programs one way or another." The USDA justifies its colossal commodity support system by saying that because of it food is more affordable. Several studies suggest this is not the case. They conclude that the ordinary consumer would save more each year paying a, few more pennies per loaf of bread or gallon of milk at the store instead of having his income siphoned off by the USDA (which, incidentally, has grown so large that the Secretary's office can't even tell me how many employees the Department has within the nearest 10,000).
Although I am a farm owner and CRP participant, I too have reservations about this particular program. With many state biologists and administrators lukewarm or opposed to CRP, and food prices causing some taxpayer unrest, there's no guarantee that the billions of dollars will continue to be available.
What if funds were pruned or cut off? I see three possible scenarios: 1) reduced payments; 2) tax credits rather than cash; or 3) landowners making contractual agreements with hunting clubs and private organizations like Pheasants Forever, or any one of the increasing number of nongovernmental waterfowl associations hatched in recent years.
Reduced payments would cut costs, but would also cut the reserve land acreage. A tax credit would likely attract more participants since a tax credit for the same amount a landowner currently receives from CRP would reduce his gross income by an amount equivalent to twice the current CRP rental rate. Many landowners would rather take a reduction in overall tax liability than receive an average annual rent of only $35 to $40 per acre.
My personal preference would be for private clubs to lease the hunting rights on all the set-aside lands they can afford. Sooner or later, majority rule will shut down hunting on most public land, so the best hope for hunting to survive into the twenty-first century is for sportsmen to create politically influential associations based on private lands managed for wildlife. [emphasis added by ALRA]
Game-keepering - which is what good game management is all about - is not cheap. The unaffiliated deer, duck, or pheasant hunter today looking to public land for his recreation doesn't have the opportunities he took for granted even fifteen years ago. Hunters need to band together to persuade more farmers there's just as much profit in managing land for wildlife as in growing price-supported grains for governmental silos.
I'm frankly looking forward to the expiration of my own CRP contract. I won't put my land back into crop production. Indeed, I can't. I've dug three shallow-water impoundments where there was once only a drainage ditch and have had U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service assistance in enlarging two of them. I've Planted scricea, bi-color, and VA-70 lespedeza, Atlantic coastal panicgrass, and autumn olive where there were once only rows of soybeans.
I've gradually converted a running sore of soil and wildlife wasteland into one of the most productive and aesthetically pleasing areas of my farm. Canada geese, mallards, wood ducks, and screech owls nest on islands and in boxes in the shallow-water impoundments; and quail, rabbits, and a dozen species of songbirds live in the lespedeza hedges, including two or three broods per summer of bluebirds and tree swallows in a dozen boxes on a "bluebird trail" that parallels the ditch. Yet every step of the way, I've had to fight USDA officials who want me to do nothing more than take their money.
Over the past eight years, I've been formally reprimanded twice for making wildlife-related improvements on my CRP acreage. My most recent reprimand came after I seized the availability of a discount-rental excavator to dig the third of my shallow-water impoundments. Had I followed USDA procedures, I would have had to consult my local Soil Conservation Service (SCS) office, which would have studied my proposal for several weeks and taken several more weeks or months to draw up its own plan. I then would have had to wait for the local Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS) office to fund it - if ever.
Doing the job myself cost the taxpayers nothing. I also did the work in less than 24 hours. Although spotted sandpipers nested there last year, the impoundment is not yet in its final form. However, since I've been put on notice, I'll have to wait until my CRP contract expires to finish the work.
The irony of my reprimands is that local USDA officials regularly show off what I've done to inspire other farmers to do the same - but only if they agree to submit to governmental limitations. The deal is always the same: "Put up with our bureaucratic delays and more paperwork than you ever dreamed of, and we'll increase your share of the dole."
This would be acceptable - annoying, but acceptable - if I thought the SCS had a better conservation track record than I do. But despite its name, the Soil Conservation Service is still more inclined to drain wetlands than to block ditches and flood low-lying fields.
It's ironic that the American farmer is so often depicted as the last well-spring of our nation's once vaunted self-reliance, when so many farmers are little more than indentured servants of governmental programs. CRP has done some good in proving to farmers that there are better uses for highly erodible land than soybean production, but it's time to find more cost-effective ways to manage land for wildlife than simply leaving it alone.
Be informed! Don't allow yourself to be snowed by CARA.
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