Dear Senator Harkin and Senator Lugar,

Agriculture is an integral part of the American landscape. With farming and ranching occupying more than 50 percent of the land in the contiguous United States, resource conservation on private agricultural land is essential to keeping our water clean, preserving our open spaces, maintaining local sources of nutritious food, and protecting vital wildlife habitat. At the same time, American farmers face strong financial pressures to till sensitive and marginal lands. For these reasons, conservation incentive programs for agricultural producers are critically important to producers and to all Americans.

We are deeply concerned that three key agriculture conservation incentive programs ­ the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP), the Farmland Protection Program (FPP), and the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP) ­ have been zero-funded in the Agriculture Appropriations bill. We believe continued funding for these programs now fall properly within the purview

of the emergency economic aid package your committee is developing. In addition, we believe the aid package should include additional funding for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), farm and ranch producer grants under the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program, extension of the incentive package to all buffer practices within the Continuous Conservation Reserve Program (CCRP), and expansion of the cost-share assistance program for organic certification from 15 states to all 50.

Many American agricultural producers need these programs to assist them in being good stewards of the land. The Farmland Protection Program has leveraged $230 million in state and local funding and protected 127,000 acres of farmland from sprawling development. WHIP cost-share programs have improved nearly 1.4 million acres of habitat for Atlantic salmon, northern bobwhite, Karner blue butterfly and other species. WRP enrollments have helped protect and restore nearly a million acres of wetlands. EQIP has helped farmers establish with integrated resource management practices to protect water quality. SARE producer grants have sparked some of the key on-farm innovations that are leading the way to more market-oriented and environmentally-friendly family farming and ranching systems. CCRP buffers help reduce sediment loadings in all areas of the country, including those not otherwise served by whole field CRP enrollments. Organic certification under the new national program will require whole farm plans covering a wide range of soil health and water quality aspects.

Tremendous needs still exist. We estimate that current demand for WRP is more than $578 million, FPP more than $200 million, WHIP more than $150 million, EQIP more than $1 billion, SARE producer grants more than $5 million, and organic certification cost-share more than $4 million. We believe that funding to address existing demand for these programs and for

making all continuous sign-up practices eligible for incentives can and should be accomplished within a fiscally-responsible emergency aid package. In our view, this funding should serve as a downpayment for a full-scale, comprehensive conservation and sustainable agriculture approach to the next farm bill, a bill that should establish stewardship incentives for family farms and ranches as a foundation of farm policy.

Thank you for taking action to restore funding and extend funding for these very valuable programs.

Sincerely,