1. THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET CHOKES CONSERVATION SECURITY PROGRAM The Bush Administration this week released its budget proposal for fiscal year 2004, and family farmers and environmentalists around the country are furious. "This budget puts no brakes on subsidies to the biggest operators to expand production and get paid by taxpayers for tearing up the land," said Dave Serfling in a statement released by the Minnesota based Land Stewardship Project. Serfling went on to say that the White Houses proposal to "rewrite the farm bill" and cap funding on the new Conservation Security Program, "shreds the only program that would stop penalizing farmers who are practicing good land stewardship." The Bush Administration's budget proposal recommends enacting a 10-year cap of $2 billion on the CSP (page 101). With a cap the program would be changed from the first-ever working lands conservation entitlement program available to all farmers who qualify and apply, to a program with limited enrollment, preferential bidding systems, and waiting lists. 2. WHITE HOUSE WHITTLES WETLANDS RESERVE If the Bush Administration's new budget is approved by Congress, hundreds of farmers would remain on the waiting list to enroll in the Wetlands Reserve Program - a mainstay of farm conservation programs. The President's proposed budget recommends funding WRP at 29% less than the amount mandated by the farm bill. This longstanding conservation program, which has helped thousands of farmers restore and conserve wetlands through long-term and permanent easements, has a backlog of nearly half a million acres. The Bush budget proposes to enroll only 178,000 acres in 2004 (page 60), instead of the 250,000 acres envisioned by framers of the farm bill. "Unfortunately, the administration's budget short-changes these farmers by cutting funding to restore and conserve wildlife habitat on their lands," said Mark Van Putten of the National Wildlife Federation in a statement released on Tuesday. "Congress must protect the national wetlands and reject this proposal." The WRP was created by the 1990 farm bill and to date has enrolled over one million acres of wetlands in long-term restoration and protection plans. The 2002 farm bill provision was designed to accelerate WRP enrollment. 3. TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE SHELL GAME The proposed budget ignores a farm bill provision that funds technical assistance for conservation programs out of mandatory money, and instead is taking a chunk out of the program funds to pay for technical assistance (page 59). In the case of the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, $18 million, or nearly 30% of the program funds, are being siphoned away from the program (page 61) to fund a technical assistance account that should have been paid for with mandatory funds. The technical assistance shell game has also hit the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (15% of program funds) and the Farmland Protection Program (10% of program funds). This move violates the intent of Congress and boils down to the White House and the Justice Department re-writing the conservation provisions of the farm bill. 4. COMMODITY PROGRAMS FEEL NO PAIN The unveiling of the budget this week touted conservation spending increases, which, as documented above, largely fall short of what was envisioned by Congress and signed by the President in the farm bill. Secretary Veneman's speech and the USDA website are curiously silent about how the commodity programs fare in the proposed budget perhaps so as not to call attention to the fact that they fare very well indeed. Without addressing the processor and packer regulation and supply management that could help restore prices, the President's budget continues the tradition of wasteful payments that fuel over-production (page 16), including $829 million in loan deficiency payments, $5.2 billion in direct payments and $3.1 billion in countercyclical payments. Without a word about processor oversight or regulation the budget outlays $2.5 billion in price support and marketing assistance loans, $1.1 billion in milk income loss contract payments, $257 million in noninsured assistance payments, $482 million in cotton user marketing payments, $125 million in peanut quota payments and $625 million simply earmarked "other." The grand whopping total is $12.6 billion in commodity outlays in 2004 or nearly twice what will be spent on conservation over the entire duration of the Farm Bill! If you would like to subscribe or unsubscribe to this list,
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2/6/03