Minneapolis Star Tribune Opinion
http://www.startribune.com/561/story/687993.html

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Editorial: Farming green — and getting punished
• Farm policy should reward proven conservation techniques.

For years, agribusiness lobbyists have scoffed at conservation agriculture as a utopian ideal that would drive real farmers into bankruptcy. They should meet Dan and Cara Miller.

The husband-wife team farm 560 rolling acres along Spring Valley Creek in southeastern Minnesota — a place where intensive cultivation of row crops would quickly send polluted runoff into the Mississippi River watershed.

So instead, the Millers raise Angus beef cattle and graze dairy heifers on pasture grass — a crop that holds the soil all year long and requires no fertilizer beyond, well, what the cows provide. The Millers plant an additional 386 acres in alfalfa and corn for silage, crops that produce cattle feed with few chemicals and little plowing.

If the United States had a sensible farm policy, it would reward the Millers for their stewardship. Instead, it puts them at a disadvantage compared to neighbors who raise corn, soybeans and other “program” crops.

Last year the Millers received about $6,000 from the federal Conservation Security Program, which helps qualifying farmers defray "green" practices such as planting wind barriers and grass buffer strips. But a comparable farm producing corn and soybeans received more than $10,000 in production subsidies.

Moreover, if there's a dip in corn or soybean prices, the government will step in with deficiency payments and loan subsidies. If the price drops for the Millers’ alfalfa or beef, it's their loss.

“Most growers adhere closely to the farm bill,” says Gyles Randall, a soil scientist and professor at the University of Minnesota-Waseca. “And what the farm bill does is penalize farmers who protect soil and water.”

This doesn’t bother Dan Miller. He holds two degrees in agronomy and has calculated that his carefully managed cattle operation earns a better profit than corn and soybeans. He would do it anyway, because he believes in conservation.

But it should bother everyone else. An ingenious 2001 study by the University of Minnesota and the Land Stewardship Project found that conservation practices like the Millers’, practiced more widely on vulnerable land, could reduce nitrogen runoff by 63 percent and cut erosion by 56 percent — enough to meet federal targets for shrinking the Gulf of Mexico hypoxic zone.

Of course, the nation can't convert every farm from corn and soybeans to cattle, but it doesn’t have to. Simple changes in tillage and nutrient management on grain farms could cut erosion and runoff by 30 percent or more, the study found.

But farmers won't make that shift as long as federal farm subsidies are tilted against conservation and in favor of the highest possible production of corn, soybeans, wheat and other favored commodities. It's time for Congress to fix the tilt.

ANOTHER WAY

“High levels of environmental benefits could be achieved for no more than, and possibly less than, what taxpayers currently pay into federal farm programs.”

University of Minnesota/Land Stewardship Project study, 2001.

Thursday: How federal farm policy should change.

©2006 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

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