1. ACTION ALERT - HELP FUND KEY CONSERVATION PROGRAMS

As reported in last week's Rural Updates (August 7), the U.S. Senate passed an agriculture supplemental bill that excluded funding for important conservation and rural development programs, including WHIP, FPP, WRP, EQIP, the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program, senior farmers market programs, the Continuous CRP program and organic certification cost-share assistance. There is still a chance to fund these important programs in 2002 by adding money to the '02 Appropriations bill when it comes to the floor in September. To continue to function properly, these programs require $284 million in FY02 outlays.

This money can be taken from the '02 reserve without hurting any other programs. Please call your Senators this week at their local offices and ask them to adopt the conservation, nutrition, rural development, research, and organic titles of the Senate Agriculture Committee-approved Emergency Agricultural Assistance Act (S. 1246) as an amendment to the regular FY 02 agriculture appropriations bill (S. 1191) when in comes to the floor in September.

Several recent editorials have found fault with the House version of the Farm Bill, which was reported out of committee on August 1. The bill, which provides a system of counter-cyclical payments, fixed-decoupled payments and marketing loan rates, is summarized at http://agriculture.house.gov/press/pr010727.html. 

The "Des Moines Register" (July 22) points out that "The bill would allow [big producers] to get an even fatter share of farm subsidies by making more porous the already loophole-ridden system of limitations." The article concludes that "The House Agriculture Committee leaders are bowing, as ever, to the farm, commodity and agribusiness organizations" that don't necessarily represent the views of small farmers or rural communities. Similar views have been expressed in "The Washington Post," which opines that under the House bill, the "excess" of "poorly targeted" payments would "continue unabated."

Writing in the August 6 "Time" magazine, Molly Ivins described the scene that awaited President Bush as he headed to his Texas ranch for his August vacation. One of the rivers near the ranch, the North Bosque, boasts fecal coliform counts that are 250 to 10,000 times the recommended safe level. The water also has unsafe levels of nitrates, ammonia and phosphorous. The reason? The county is home to 250 concentrated animal feeding operaions, which translates to "about 110,000 dairy cows that produce an estimated 1.8 million tons of cow poop a year." Chicken farms in east Texas and hog farms in the Panhandle are creating similar problems for watersheds there. During Bush's tenure as Governor of Texas, the state's Environmental Protection Agency relaxed the rules on permits and reporting of conditions on factory farms, a decision whose repercussions may come back to haunt him, downstream.

4. LOUISIANA CALLS FOR CONSERVATION IN NEXT FARM BILL

Representatives from the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry, the LA Association of Soil and Water Conservation Districts, several conservation organizations and the LA Organic Association recently released "Conservation and the Next Farm Bill A Statement of Principles," a document which is supported by the LA State University Agriculture Center and the LA Farm Bureau.

The Statement contains three Core Principles: Increasing support for agriculture and forestry conservation programs can help the United States meet both production and environmental goals; the Farm Bill should keep farming viable and profitable by supporting local and regional marketing and value adding; and farms can support public benefits such as soil and water quality in addition to producing food and fiber. The statement calls for Farm Bill action to address issues of water quality, climate change, energy, urban sprawl and watershed planning. The statement calls for improved technical assistance through NRCS, and increases in CRP, WRP, CREP, EQIP, WHIP, forestry programs, and sustainable agriculture programs.