You won’t have to go to far in your day to run into the polarized political debate that is currently raging in our country.  Many voices compete to be heard, and while shouting is not without merit in acheiving that, it is often at the expense of a much more substantive debate we need to have.  One federal program that might illustrate that while minimizing emotional fallout is the Conservation Reserve Program or CRP.

The program came to prominence under the 1985 Farm Bill, though it had existed three decaes prior.  It targeted highly erodible land, placing it under vegetative cover for a period of 10 to 15 years and removing it from production.  These acres were essentially rented to the federal government.

There had long been a conservation push to expand the program, but the push was coupled with the collapase of the farm economy during the Farm Crisis of the 1980’s.  A farm family could now enroll their acres for a guaranteed yearly income and for a guarenteed length of time.  This contract gave families something firm to restructre their debt and removed acres from production that might boost sagging markets, saving farms and saving soil.  5 million acres were under contract in 1986.  40 million would be enrolled by 1990.

The program began with great intentions on all fronts.  As time has went on, however, concerns have arisen.  One can see many of them by simply travling down Highway 34 or Highway 2 in Southern Iowa.

Southern Iowa was hardest hit by the Farm Crisis.  Its rolling hills were also prime targets for the erodible acres sought by CRP.  Some of those acres can be seen today, unfarmed and ungrazed.  You can also see the impact it has had on local communities.

No seed, fertilizer, or equipment is needed on those acres.  No hardware store, or repair shop, or gas station sells anything of note to service them.   No steward is needed.

Many wonder if this is what conservation needs to look like.

The CRP rate can create competition in rental rates for other cropland.  In some cases it can set a floor that raises the barrier for entry for young farm families.  In some it simply offers a higher rate of return, attracting acres not for their conservation merit, but simply for the return that might not ever reside in the local community.

The rental rates can also prohibit cow/calf producers from competing for those same acres, who would leave them in grass, but generate prodcution from them.  Attempts have been made to change this, but to date each attempt runs into some dedicated to the idea that conservation needs to look presettlement.  The farmer, last in line, is often left without something practical.

It isn’t hard to envision an attempt to change the program being shouted down as an attack on the environment.  Shouts won’t extinguish embers that still smolder in rural communities from the meltdown in the farm economy.  Being faithful to both is how the program took root in the first place.