The 2007 farm bill

Excerpt

The 2002 farm bill is not even two years old and already conversations are starting about the 2007 bill. That makes sense because the stakes for conservationists will be high. It pays to be prepared. I was asked recently to speculate about what conservationists may face as the farm bill comes up for reauthorization in 2007.1 started by looking for clues in what happened in 2002.

The first and by far the most important clue for 2007 is the coming of age of the environmental agenda in U.S. agricultural conservation policy. For five decades, two purposes dominated public investment in working land conservation: (1) improving agricultural productivity and (2) sustaining the resource base for agricultural production. The environmental benefits from our work were real—reducing damage from sediment and flooding—but they were the icing on the cake. The cake was improved, sustained productivity.

In 2002, policymakers made a fundamental shift in priority from productivity and resource conservation to environmental quality. They drove home that shift in purpose with massive increases in funding for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program-formerly the Agricultural Conservation Program. The environmental agenda is now the cake, not the icing.

The second striking thing …