Programs May Hurt Grasslands
By JONATHAN RIVOLI
Native prairie grasslands continue to dwindle on the Northern Plains and government crop subsidies are at least partially to blame, according to a Government Accountability Office study out this week.
The report, titled “Impact of USDA Payments and Sodbuster on Grassland Conversions to Cropland,” names North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana as three of the top states with grassland reduction.
State and local agriculture officials in these areas “confirmed that farm program payments, specifically crop insurance, crop disaster assistance and marketing assistance loan payments are important – though not always the most important – factors in producers’ conversion decisions,” the report said.
Prairie grasslands have traditionally provided a haven for number of species, including migratory birds and bison.
Environmental groups saw the report as evidence that the government is not doing enough to protect wildlife or the lands it thrives on. Ducks Unlimited, a Tennessee-based habitat conservation group, even went so far as to call the system an “ecological disaster.”
“It makes no sense – and the report agrees – for taxpayers to fund growing crops on these lands,” said Scott Stevens, the group’s director of conservation for the Great Plains.
Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said he worried about another finding in the report that these programs run counter to another part of the farm bill: the Conservation Reserve Program. Known as CRP, this program pays farmers to keep land native and unplanted.
“I think the problem is we have one foot on the pedal and one foot on the gas,” Cook said.
In North Dakota alone, there are 2.8 million acres of CRP land, which have cost taxpayers $973 million, the report found. At the same time, there were 1.16 million acres of grasslands converted to croplands.
The report found that in 2006, North Dakota had 20,592 acres of previously unfarmed grasslands converted to farmland. South Dakota led the nation with 47,167 acres in converted grasslands.
The GAO report was ordered as part of the ongoing debate over the farm bill, which authorizes both the crop subsidy and CRP programs.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said he would like to see a farm bill that takes care of this problem. He said that the farm bill is designed to provide a helping hand to farmers, not to alter incentives in a way that changes the landscape.
“We don’t want to be developing a farm program that encourages turning prairie land into cropland to get farm program benefits off of that,” Dorgan said.
Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., said he too is against a farm program that incentives the breaking up of the prairie.
“I believe the GAO report is overstated, but we are tightening regulations to make sure that these incentives aren’t there,” Pomeroy said.
The reason it seemed overstated, Pomeroy said, is because much of the newly broken in land hasn’t yet been added to the acreage that farmers can claim to receive subsidies on.
The report noted that payments and safety net provisions have a stronger effect on promoting conversion when prices are low. Today, with both corn and wheat prices at historically high levels, the conversion could be more an effect of changing market dynamics.
Dan Wogsland of the North Dakota Grain Grower’s Association, said the farmers he’s talked to have been much more likely to mention prices than government programs as the main driver of grassland conversion. With the higher prices, land that would have been unprofitable to farm is now a money maker.
“That’s the major factor,” he said. “It’s good land for things like hunting but they can now get much more money growing on that land.”
(Reach reporter Jonathan Rivoli at 223-8482 or jonathan.rivoli@bismarcktribune.com)The following fields overflowed:PAGE = 1B 2B 3B 4B 5B 6B
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