Congress and the Bush administration should make good on their promises to fully implement an innovative new farm program that rewards good land stewardship.

The program, known as the Conservation Security Program, began last year but only on a limited basis. The U.S. Department of Agriculture restricted the program to a few watersheds in the country, far fewer than supporters of the program envisioned.

 

In Nebraska the only watershed eligible was the lower Little Blue River area near Fairbury.

Congress and the administration also cut funding for the program when they approved a drought relief package for farmers. Senate action on the relief package, however, pledged that full funding for the program would be restored when Congress returned after the election.

Wildlife groups were critical of the decision to offset drought relief funding by cuts in the conservation program. "Funding drought relief by robbing the Conservation Security Program is like paying for hurricane relief by cutting the disaster preparedness budget," said Duane Hovorka of the Nebraska Wildlife Federation.

The resource-preserving practices encouraged by the Conservation Security Program would help farmers and ranchers better manage their fields during drought, helping reduce the need for huge drought bailout packages.

The program's incentives are not tied to production of a specific commodity crop. Instead, all farmers and ranchers who develop plans to protect resources are eligible.

Notably, those farmers who have been following good conservation practices for years are eligible under the program. As Mike Moorman, who manages the program in Nebraska noted, "a lot of programs, quite frankly, had rewarded some people who were not good stewards of the land."

Preliminary planning for 2005 calls for expansion of the program in Nebraska to about 2.5 million acres, or a one-eighth of the state's total farming base, on the theory that Congress will approve nationwide funding of about $190 million.

That still falls short of the original intent of the legislation, according to Traci Bruckner of the Nebraska Center for Rural Affairs. "They're still leaving out a lot of farmers who have really been good stewards, and they've been good examples to follow. But they will not qualify, just because they're not in the right area."

The history of farm policy in the United States has its share of misguided spending, such as subsidizing irrigation projects and then propping up the price of the crops that are grown with the irrigated water.

The Conservation Security Program offers a more sensible approach for providing financial help to the nation's farmers and ranchers. It deserves to be expanded to the nationwide program that Congress originally intended.