Now it's our turn

Excerpt

Well, it's done. The 2002 U.S. farm bill, I mean. The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 was signed by President Bush on May 13.

I've written about the farm bill several times—maybe too many times—over the past two or three years. Some days I think we've spent too much time thinking about, talking about, and working on the farm bill. Still, for all the reasons I've described in earlier columns, we stuck with it. The potential for this bill to advance the cause of conservation and the conservation profession seemed just too great to sit on the sidelines.

So, what came of all that potential? An 80 percent increase in funding for U.S. conservation programs. Not as much as the 100 percent increase we recommended, but close.

“From this point forward, conservation professionals will largely determine what producers and taxpayers will harvest from the new investment the 2002 farm bill makes in conservation.”

Better yet, more than 80 percent of that new investment is targeted to improving the management of working land—cropland, pasture, rangeland, and, in some cases, forestland—that we depend …