A policy option for targeting soil conservation expenditures

Excerpt

IN the four decades preceding 1970, agricultural production in the United States became increasingly concentrated on a smaller land base. Some cropland reverted to forest. Other cropland was idled by federal commodity programs. This process complemented government programs to conserve soil. After 1970, however, this trend in land use reversed dramatically. More than 54 million acres were brought back into crop production, and soil erosion increased as a result. In response to this erosion problem, there is underway a reexamination of conservation programs in light of today's resource needs.

In the 1981 farm bill, Congress emphasized the need to target conservation expenditures to the nation's more erosive land. Among other things, the Food and Agriculture Act of 1981 authorized creation of a special areas conservation program that would compensate farmers for using less erosive cropping systems. Such incentives could especially help the relatively few farmers who cultivate the critically erosive lands accounting for most erosion and sediment damage in the United States.

We explore here a policy option that would compensate farmers for shifting erosive cropland to less erosive uses. Such a resource use adjustment is the only means of attaining adequate protection for the nation …