Agriculture and conservation: A new alliance

Excerpt

FOUR years ago I accompanied a group of conservationists to a meeting with Secretary of Agriculture John Block and Assistant Secretary John Crowell. After the secretary concluded his remarks and left the room, John Crowell turned to the group and said, “The need as we see it is to downsize the U.S. agricultural production machine. If you conservationists can help us do it in such a way that we reduce agricultural subsidies and also benefit the environment, we have an opportunity to cooperate.”

That invitation to cooperate was all the more startling given the moment it was tendered. Secretary James Watt was then at the Interior Department and relations between the administration and the environmental community were not intimate.

At the time of the meeting total federal outlays for agriculture were running a then-shocking total of about $19 billion a year. Now, they are about $26 billion, nearly 50 percent more than was predicted just one year ago. So our policymakers have increased, not reduced, the federal role in farming. It is difficult to imagine the American public accepting as a permanent fixture of public policy an annual bill of $26 billion to …