New approaches to commodity programs and conservation goals

Excerpt

THE 1983 payment-in-kind (PIK) program once again demonstrates the serious disincentives to conservation farming that result from commodity set-aside programs. Farmers and officials of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have long known about these disincentives, but no one yet has found a solution to them. It is time someone does some serious thinking about the situation and resolves it.

The major problem is this: Acreage histories determine base crop acres for the set-aside. Farmers who plant their farms fence-to-fence with the commodity in surplus get a large base acreage because of that history. Thus, when the set-aside is imposed, they can still grow a significant acreage of the controlled crop, even after they have reduced plantings by the required percentage.

In the meantime, the farmers who use a soil-building crop rotation, including grass, legumes, or other low-profit (but good conservation) crops find themselves in a terrible plight. Because their annual plantings of the surplus commodity have been small, their base acreage is low. After imposing the required set-aside, the base acreage is still …