Tax reform to achieve soil conservation

Excerpt

NEW sodbuster and swampbuster legislation is almost certain to emerge in the 1985 farm bill. But these laws are only a first step. Not to be obscured is the critical task of tax reform and how the present tax code bears upon the health of our soil resources. To leave the existing code intact is to reward those who engage in soil-ravaging activities. The code includes numerous tax breaks and shelters that subsidize cultivation of marginal land and wetlands. It also encourages the shift of land ownership into hands unable or unwilling to practice conservation. A comprehensive soil conservation policy must include changes in tax laws. Otherwise governmental efforts to curb soil erosion will be at cross-purposes with a tax system that encourages just the reverse.

The exemplar of bad tax policy is the tax subsidy for soil abuse in the Nebraska Sandhills, where large areas of fragile, sandy rangeland were put to the plow and blanketed with center-pivot irrigation systems to grow corn. Together, the investment tax credit, capital gains exemption, accelerated depreciation, and deductible “conservation” expenses subsidize the conversion of rangeland to irrigated cropland by as much as $180 per acre—half …