Excerpt
FOR more than 50 years, soil conservation policy in the U.S. has generally followed a voluntary agenda. Research in the public and private sectors developed technologies to bring soil erosion under control. Education and technical assistance were provided to those who sought it, and cost-share money assisted with building terraces, dams, waterways, and other structures designed to reduce erosion.
Since passage of the 1985 Food Security Act, however, the voluntary approach has been augmented with an element of coercion. Conservation compliance provisions of this act specify that in order to be eligible for federal farm program benefits, farmers with fields having highly erodible land must develop a conservation plan and have it approved by the Soil Conservation Service (SCS). These plans required formal approval by December 1989 and full implementation by December 1994. In the strict sense, conservation compliance is voluntary; that is, a farmer can choose not to have a plan or not to farm in compliance with the conservation plan and forego farm program benefits. But the financial importance of farm program payments, especially to grain farmers during the on-farm planning years of the policy1, meant …
Footnotes
Steve Padgitt and Paul Lasly are extension sociologists with the Department of Sociology, Iou1u State Uniuenity, Ames. Journal Paper No. J-14954 of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, Ames. Project No.2550.
- Copyright 1993 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society
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