The 1985 farm bill: A turning point for soil conservation

Excerpt

“MAY lightning not strike me dead, but for once I think Charlie Stenholm and the Sierra Club are on the same side on something,” exclaimed Congressman Charlie Stenholm, his right hand raised ever so slightly during testimony at a House Agriculture Subcommittee hearing on April 4. The something Stenholm and the Sierra Club seemed to agree on was the need for the most important soil conservation measures the Congress has considered in decades: a conservation reserve to retire erosion-prone land from production and a strong sodbuster policy to discourage yet more erodible land from coming under the plow.

And may lightning not strike all of us dead, but as the hearing wore on the choir expanded to include everyone from John Tarburton of the Farm Bureau to Maureen Hinkle of the National Audubon Society to Bob Gray of the American Farmland Trust to Justin Ward of the Natural Resources Defense Council to Michael Heller of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to Norm Berg of the Soil Conservation Society of America to Charlie Boothby of the National Association of Conservation Districts to Jack Berryman of the International Association of Fish ...