A conservation tariff

Excerpt

WE must find a way to provide additional support for soil conservation efforts in the United States. A tariff on exports may be the answer.

It is not necessary here to develop the statistics that indicate there is a serious and extensive, though not pervasive, soil erosion problem. The Soil and Water Resources Conservation Act study is only the most recent evidence that we are losing billions of tons of soil a year, much of it from row crop agriculture. The productivity of our resource base is gradually being diminished, and the potential for substantial damage looms large.

Because the adverse consequences of soil erosion occur so gradually, it is possible that a farm operator may hardly be aware that a problem exists. But more importantly, even if the operator is aware that erosion is occurring, it will commonly not be in his or her own economic interest to control the problem. Why? Because most of the costs or damages either occur off the property (in roadside ditches, streams, reservoirs, etc.) or far enough in the future to be beyond the farmer's planning horizon. In short, the economic climate encourages erosion.

Because farmers cannot realistically be expected to …