Earl Butz Was Wrong (on Cover)

 When my first boss in ASCS sent me to NC for a month to get a taste what state and county offices did, and farmer fieldmen (as district directors were called then), I spent a week in Halifax county IIRC.  The CED was sharp. It was fall so operations were slower. One day he took me out into the field, perhaps doing a spot check, don't remember.  But we stopped at a sawmill.  It had a machine, a lathe perhaps, for shaving a thin layer of wood from a rotating log. Fascinating, as I'd never seen it before.  I think the wood shavings were cut into strips which were then woven into wooden baskets.

We weren't there to look at the operation, but to get one of the workers to sign up for cost-sharing under the then Agricultural Conservation Program.  What was the practice?  A cover crop.   (Cover crops were, I think, particularly popular in the South, where there had been a lot of erosion of worn-out cotton land.)

ACP was established in the New Deal, but by 1969 it was under attack.  Republicans, led by Secretary of Agriculture Butz, argued that some, or perhaps all of the practices, increased the productivity of farms, and, therefore the farmers could and should find the practices worthwhile enough to finance and install on their own, without the carrot of a government cost-share. They also argued that items such as liming were the result of lobbying by the industry. 

There was a lot of back and forth over the fate of ACP between the Nixon administration and Congress, where the House was controlled by Democrats throughout. In the end the program was cut back, both by reducing appropriations and by inflation, and the cover crop practice and liming were eliminated. 

IMO the Butz expectation that rational self-interest would be sufficient to perpetuate widespread cover crops was disproved by the results. 

Farmland Preservation

 Modern Farmer has an upbeat review of an early farmland preservation initiative on Long Island, dating to 1974.  Farmers sell off the development rights to their land, getting lower assessment and lower taxes.

It sounds good, but I wonder about the economics.  There's reference to a 23 acre farm. It may have been growing potatoes in the 1970's; Long Island's glacial soil was great for potatoes. But with changing farming economics and inflation, I'm guessing today's farmer needs to switch to vegetables and specialty crops to make things work.  Perhaps tomorrow the land will grow greenhouse or vertical farming.  How long can the deal last?

Encouraging Cover Crops

 Secretary Vilsack is trying to encourage the use of cover crops by providing incentive payments.

In 1969 I was in North Carolina trying to get a little exposure to state and county operations.  I remember the CED in one county took me on a visit to a sawmill operation.  IIRC they were shaving the logs to create the slices of wood used in making baskets when we visited.  While there he signed up a worker for an Agricultural Conservation Program practice for cover crops on his land. I think he knew the worker, his sawmill job, and his farming operation (perhaps tobacco?) well enough to make that trip.

In the 1970's the Nixon/Butz regime targeted the program using the argument that good farmers would use good farming practices which were profitable; the corollary is that a practice which isn't profitable isn't good and ignoring the issue of differing time periods.

[updated with link]

Congressional Research Reports

This site has Congressional Research Service Reports.

A couple recent ones:

Farm Bill  "The new five-year estimated cost of the 2014 farm bill, as of August 2016, is now $466.5 billion for the four largest titles, compared with $484 billion for those same titles two years ago. This is $17 billion less than what was projected at enactment. SNAP outlays are projected to be $24 billion less for the five-year period FY2014-FY2018 than was expected in February 2014. Crop insurance is projected to be $4.4 billion less for the five-year period and conservation nearly $4 billion less. In contrast, farm commodity and disaster program payments are projected to be nearly $15 billion higher than was expected at enactment due to lower commodity market prices (which raises counter-cyclical payments) and higher livestock payments due to disasters. 

Conservation Compliance

Why Farmers Went for Trump

Modern Farmer has a post listing five reasons.

I've lost my memory of how the "waters of the US" issue might relate to swampbuster rules.  I know NRCS, EPA, and Corps of Engineers all get involved.  I also remember in 1991 getting an earful in Kansas about SCS handling of sod/swamp. I assume that's still a sore spot.

Cover Crops

I feels as if I've mentioned this before, but anyway.

Tamar Haspel has an article in the Post on changes in "big ag", which affect the environment, such as "no-till". She focuses on cover crops, noting that sometimes they pay off financially, but often they don't. Also, farmers who rent are less motivated to use cover crops on the rented ground.

I'll quote my comment:

"Once upon a time, there was a program called the Agricultural Conservation Program. It included cost sharing for various conservation practices, including winter cover crops. Then into this idyllic picture came a President, elected by the people. This President refused to spend the money Congress appropriated for the program, thinking it was a waste of money. After much toing and froing, and a few lawsuits IIRC, Congress and the President compromise by calling the program a new name and by killing some of the conservation practices, including the cover crop practice." 

The toing and froing was partly over whether the President had the authority not to spend the money.  IIRC the Supreme Court eventually said no.

The President was Nixon.

Blast from the Past: ACP

The old Agricultural Conservation program was in operation when I joined ASCS.  I can remember a trip by a county executive director (Pitt county, NC maybe?) to a sawmill where people were making woven wood garden baskets.  This was fall, I think tobacco harvest was well over, so it was work for after harvest time.  Anyhow, the CED was signing up a couple landowners/part-time farmers to ACP practices.

ACP was a cost-sharing program, the farmer paying part of the cost of "approved conservation practices", ASCS paying the other part.  It was early in the Nixon administration, which didn't believe in the program (thinking it basically enhanced production so should be entirely paid for by the farmer).  They ended up in a battle with Congress over the program, resulting in a number of changes.  Over the years it was reformed again and finally moved to SCS (which had always fought with ASCS over it).

Why do I babble on about it?  This bit from Farm Policy:

"In other policy related news, Mark Peters reported in today’s Wall Street Journal that, “Kevin Hollinger planted radishes and oats last fall in his corn and soybean fields, but he isn’t planning to harvest them. Instead, he is letting the crops die over the winter to improve the soil and keep fertilizer and other nutrients from running into nearby waterways.
“‘I could hardly go to town without someone asking: ‘What’s that in your field?’’ said Mr. Hollinger, a fourth-generation farmer.
“Helping to foot the bill for his experiment is a pilot program set to launch fully next month. Farmers in the Ohio River basin are being paid to make changes—from what they plant to how they handle manure—in an effort to minimize runoff that can cause hypoxia, or low oxygen levels, in waterways.”

 Winter cover  were one set of the conservation practices covered by ACP.  I find my memory is foggy here.  I don't know whether they were dropped, like lime was, and later reinstated into EQIP and CSP or whether they have always survived.

Colorado and Rainwater

I was surprised to learn that collecting rainwater in Colorado is mostly illegal.  (Hat tip: Life on a Colorado Farm.)  I knew the West had different laws on water than in the East, but not this.

No-Till Farming

 I was going to use a snarky title for this, like urbanites find out about no-till farming, but instead I'll just refer to an article on Wonkblog.  From there a link to a Philpott piece on cover crops and no-till.  I remember when ASCS  offered cost-sharing for cover crops, back in the late 60's, something which was killed by the Nixon administration.  (I'm trying to remember what the CED said--he was aggressively promoting the practices, I think for workload, not specifically for the conservation benefits.

Conservation Compliance and Crop Insurance

From today's Farm Policy, discussing farm bill prospects:

"And on conservation compliance, the veteran lawmaker indicated that, “Well, the Senate says they have to have it. They’ve had votes on it where it’s passed by a significant margin. I think, at the end of the day, we’re going to have conservation compliance. But I have been working on this, that if we have to have it—because right now the House is not for this—but if we have to have it, the insurance companies will not be responsible for policing this, so they won’t have to decide whether somebody is in compliance or not.”

I'm not sure the veteran lawmaker (ranking member of House ag) understands conservation compliance, in that I don't know how one would ever require the insurance companies to police it.  Seems to me it would work essentially like the cotton/rice co-ops. 

Pay Limit on Insurance/Conservation Compliance

From Chris Clayton:

The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday evening to reduce the taxpayer share of crop insurance premium subsidies for the largest farmers.

Along with that, farmers would not be able to ignore conservation compliance requirements if they forego commodity programs and rely strictly on crop insurance for their safety net.

[Updated: Carl Zulauf of Ohio State has a discussion of the history of payment limits and the crop insurance proposals here.]

Where Are All the Prairie Potholes?

I've blogged before on the prairie potholes, most recently here.  EWG has a set of maps which outline the pothole region, as well as where grassland and wetland have been converted to active cropland recently.

Note my use of "active"--that's because by definition every acre in the Conservation Reserve Program once was cropped/considered by FSA/ASCS to be cropland.

Conservation Compliance Overview from CRS

Via STu Ellis at farmgate, here's the latest CRS summary of conservation compliance. A good overview for Congress, but doesn't break new ground for me except:

• seeing the reduction in soil erosion since 1985.
• noting that OIG was doing a 2-phase review of it, the first phase was in 2008, no report has been issued on the second phase yet.  (Who polices the policeman?)

Conservation Compliance and NRCS

Via Farm Policy, the Grand Forks Herald reports on a backlog of wetland determinations at NRCS, a big enough issue to get the agency head out there.

From the article:

Wetlands determinations that are held up, waiting for NRCS approval, have become frustrating for the region’s farmers, particularly those in the central and southern Red River Valley. They want to use tile drainage or water management to contend with a string of wet years, and to capitalize on higher commodity prices and land values.

Apparently NRCS is looking at using a 30-year average, dropping extreme years and coming up with an average.

This sentence struck me: "White [head of NRCS] said he thinks USDA can approve some of the procedures in a month." I wonder. If there's no one to challenge the changes, he's probably right. But if Ducks Unlimited or others think it's unwise/unfair, I'd assume they'd have to go through rule-making, though on the third hand I'm not sure how much rule-making NRCS does.  In the old days that wasn't part of the agency's culture, simply because they were always helping farmers, never hurting them.

Once again this is in the pothole area, and is a caution to us bureaucrats who assume once you identify a thing, it's that thing forever.

Dueling Aerial Compliance: NRCS and FSA

ASCS/FSA has long used aerial photography to validate acreage reports.  It was a big deal in the 70's when we moved to aerial compliance using 35mm slides matched against the base photography.  Samuel T. Brown, Jr. and his shop got an award because they saved so much energy

Now it seems NRCS is into aerial compliance(for conservation compliance reviews):

Instead of staff taking photographs [as they did in last year's pilot], this year NRCS will contract to use special planes equipped with GPS-synched, high-resolution cameras attached to the belly of the craft.
“We feel this will be much more efficient,” said Adkins. “We went through several teams of volunteers to complete last year’s pilot project. All the banking and tight turning required to get good photographs took a lot of time.”

I wonder if there's been any coordination among the agencies.  Faint hope. (Though I suspect the parameters for NRCS are enough different than FSA to make coordination hard. I am a little concerned about the idea of notifying landowners of the flights--does that set a precedent for FSA, or is what I would guess to be a big different in altitude enough of a distinguishing feature?)

Potholes Again in ND?

I remember Gary Cruff (the production adjustment specialist in the ND state office) calling in in the early 80's to be sure management knew what they were doing in changing cropland definitions around pothole areas.  We had revised the handbook and in the process had  changed the language and the regulations.

 The answer to Gary was that the change was intended, though in my memory the assistant deputy administrator who made the call was from Texas which has no potholes and probably did not understand the issues.  The potholes represent areas where blocks of ice from the retreating glacier sat, so the glacial debris settled around the ice, which when it melted then created a low area or pothole. Depending on seasonal precipitation, the pothole might fill with water, or might dry around the margins. There are also long-term wet and dry trends--over the course of several  dry years the farmer might be able to crop the margins, if not the entire pothole.   The question then became: were the marginal areas "cropland" or not; was the land regularly cropped with only occasional and intermittent flooding or was it not possible to crop it in "normal" years?  Under the program, land that was cropland could be designated as set-aside/ACR, land that wasn't cropland couldn't, so the farmers wanted as much of the pothole margin to be considered cropland as possible so they could call it set-aside.  The assistant deputy administrator took the approach that the program needed to reduce production when it compensated farmers for set-aside, and if the margins were not regularly cropped the farmers were getting a freebie. He was concerned about program integrity and, as a Republican, taxpayer money.

The issue is very sensitive to what management in the 1980's used to call "the duckies", the conservationists.  The pothole areas are important for wildlife, particularly for waterfowl and migratory birds.  The conservationists could care less back then about "program integrity"; they wanted the potholes protected--call them "cropland" and designate them as set-aside.  So, as I recall it, both the conservationists and the farmers were on the same side of that issue at the time.  That seems unlikely, so maybe my memory is totally wrong.

Anyway,  Sen. Hoeven is giving NRCS flak about its enforcement of conservation compliance.  The press release doesn't say so, but IMHO it's potholes again. (Hat tip: Farm Policy)  BTW, Sen. Hoeven could use some help on his website--there seems to be some disconnect there.  Maybe as much disconnect as my memory and potholes.

Administering Conservation Compliance

Chris Clayton has a post on the possible linking of a conservation compliance requirement to crop insurance in the next farm bill.  There's this quote from a proponent which I don't understand:

“Despite what you may have heard, attaching compliance to the crop insurance premium support would have a pretty minimal impact back on the farm,” Scholl [head of American Farmland Trust] continued. “Farmers across the United States would still be able to buy crop insurance and get operating loans from their bank. Anyone out of compliance simply wouldn’t receive the crop insurance premium support until they come back into compliance. NRCS and FSA would still do compliance checks using the same system we have in place now, and crop insurance agents would not have an additional enforcement role.”

I've always assumed the government subsidies for crop insurance are behind the scenes, invisible to the policy holder.  If I have a policy for which the nominal premium is $1000 and the government subsidy is  $600, then the crop insurance company would bill me for $400.  Is that right?  (If so, it's another instance of "invisible government", which is the subject of a Christmas present which I've not yet read.  But that's a digression.)

If so, then if NRCS/FSA determine me to be out of compliance and notify the company, what happens? Does the company bill me for the $600, or do I just have my coverage reduced down to whatever $400 would buy me?  Seems to me whatever happens the agents are going to be somewhat involved, unless, of course, there's no consequences to the farmer being out of compliance.

  

NRCS Pushing Online Service

Via Farm Policy, here's NRCS Chief White talking about how his customers will be able to do their conservation paperwork from home by fall.  (Yes, he qualifies his hopes a bit, but it's an ambitious vision.)  This is in the Senate Ag hearing on conservation, and the audio clip doesn't include the chair's reaction to his plan.

EWG and Conservation Compliance

EWG has a paper on conservation compliance out Monday, in advance of a hearing tomorrow.

I'm no expert on the subject, particularly since my knowledge of the matching process between NRCS data and FSA data is so out of date. But the study seems professional and hits all the bases, although it obviously is pushing for changes in conservation compliance. 

Some notes:

•  the report says linking crop insurance with conservation compliance was dropped in the 96 farm bill to encourage participation in crop insurance. It argues that goal has been achieved so the requirement should be reinstated.
•  the report's interesting on the process of easing up on the initial 1986equirements.  I was sort of peripherally aware of some of the changes, but mostly of the fact NRCS did not at all like having to change from a service/educational agency to a regulatory one.

 A couple quotes I found interesting: 

there has been less focus on the FSA officials who have had the lead administrative responsibility for the law from the outset. FSA officials are responsible for making final determinations on whether producers qualify for the most important exemptions and variances, including the good faith exemption, graduated penalties and eligibility for relief because of economic or personal hardship. NRCS’s more limited role is to provide the technical information and guidance for the decisions made by FSA. According to some observers, FSA officials, who have extensive experience with enforcement of commodity program rules, have been largely unwilling to deny farm program benefits to farmers who do not actively implement their conservation plans. It is FSA that bears the greatest burden of responsibility for the law’s ineffectiveness and the apparent acrimony between FSA and NRCS officials. [page 18]

ongoing rancor between USDA’s Farm Service Agency, which has the lead responsibility for enforcement, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which provides technical assistance to farmers and conducts spot checks of compliance, has contributed to enforcement failures.  [page 22]

I wonder whether part of the resistance to the idea of combining SCS and ASCS in the early 1990's was the fear that, if you put everyone in one agency, the enforcement of conservation compliance would have been more effective.

Sod/Swamp in New Farm Bill?

Philip Brasher reports Sen. Grassley is undecided on whether sod/swamp provisions should apply to farmers who buy crop insurance.

I don't know how well NRCS and FSA are doing these days in coordinating their work flows, but back in the old days LaVonne Maas and Sandy Penn got gray hairs trying to work out the problems.  Making the eligibility data available to crop insurance companies would be a new challenge.

[Just joking about the gray hairs]