Excerpt
IT is a rare discussion of soil conservation policy in Washington that does not refer to the 1977 study by the General Accounting Office (GAO), Congress's auditing arm. That study, “To Protect Tomorrow's Food Supply, Soil Conservation Needs Priority Attention,” sharply criticized major conservation programs in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)—Conservation Operations and the Great Plains Conservation Program (GPCP) within the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) and the Agricultural Conservation Program (ACP) administered by the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (ASCS). Wide coverage of the report by the media caused USDA considerable embarrassment. Sometime this fall GAO will issue a follow-up report that promises to raise more welts and yelps in the conservation community.
A draft of this forthcoming report, however, lacks the frankness and probing detail that characterized GAO's earlier work. This is a disappointing departure from previous GAO efforts, which have given Congress and the public a revealing assessment of USDA's conservation programs. Given the dissatisfaction with Secretary of Agriculture John Block's national conservation program presented last …
Footnotes
Ken Cook, P.O. Box 605, Shpherdstown. West Virginia 25443, writes on conservation and agricultural issues.
- Copyright 1983 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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