Ranchers Get Right to Graze Animals, Harvest Hay on Protected Land
Posted on: Wednesday, 28 May 2008, 06:00 CDT
By Sue Kirchhoff
WASHINGTON -- Responding to high feed costs, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday it will allow livestock producers to graze animals and produce hay on millions of fragile acres now set aside for conservation.
The announcement is the latest in a series of USDA efforts to blunt the impact of record and near-record grain prices that are boosting U.S. food inflation and adding to the threat of hunger worldwide. In past years, the USDA has allowed haying and grazing on limited conservation acreage in emergency situations such as drought. This is the first national initiative.
USDA Secretary Ed Schafer said the initiative could bring into use up to 24 million acres, an area nearly the size of Kentucky. That could provide 18 million tons of feed and forage, worth $1.2 billion. Farmers who participate will still have to protect the most sensitive areas, such as wetlands and buffer strips along streambeds.
Further, the program will be available only after primary nesting season for birds that depend on the conservation acreage.
"(This) will significantly increase the amount of feed available to the livestock industry," Schafer said.
The policy change relaxes rules for the Conservation Reserve Program, under which farmers are paid under 10- to 15-year contracts to idle fragile lands. The program covers about 35 million acres. Acreage has been falling, however. Farmers have been choosing not to re-enroll land when contracts expire because high grain prices mean they can make more by planting than they can collect in conservation payments.
Sportsmen and hunting-related businesses have been wary of efforts to loosen the requirements of the conservation program, which has greatly increased wildlife populations.
A spokesman for Ducks Unlimited said the USDA move was positive in that the agency so far has resisted pressure from farming groups to open the conservation lands to broader use.
"We don't want this to be the beginning of a slippery slope: first haying and grazing, then (the planting of) soybeans, corn or wheat," said Ducks Unlimited spokesman Neil Shader.
Livestock producers have been hammered by corn prices that have risen to as high as $6.50 a bushel on futures exchanges, double the price of 2006. Corn prices are raging due to higher demand and higher production costs. Demand is up partly because of federal mandates for increased ethanol production.
"The use of corn in ethanol continues to put pressure on our industry," says Colin Woodall of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. "We've had several years of extreme weather that has put pressure on forage, including hay."
Woodall says some cattle feedlot operators in the Southwest have reported losing as much as $200 per animal due to sharply higher corn prices.
Farmers who have conservation contracts would pay a $75 fee to sign up for the new program, but they would not lose rental payments on acreage. (c) Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Source: USA TODAY
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