Federal Farm Bill Passes: A Mixed Bag for Conservation

House and Senate conferees reached an agreement to reauthorize the Farm Bill with modest increases for conservation relative to commodity supports, as well as a timid step forward on the problem of ethanol subsidies. After the Bill passed the House and Senate by overwhelming margins, the President vetoed the legislation because of its cost. The House and Senate then mustered the required two-thirds majorities to override the veto.

The Farm Bill reauthorization will provide $4 billion more for conservation over ten years. This will be split among current programs, fund a new program to pay farmers to conserve wetlands, and add new incentives for endangered species habitat improvement, conservation easements, and forest conservation. The Bill reauthorizes the important Grassland Reserve Program, and expands the popular Conservation Stewardship Program to 80 million acres from the current 16 million.

Unfortunately, the Bill also reduces the annual acreage enrollment in the Wetlands Reserve Program, excludes language that would have added greater protection to riparian areas, and reduces the size of the Conservation Reserve Program. The conferees also paired back a national “sod-saver” provision that would have denied eligibility for federal crop insurance and disaster bailouts to newly-farmed native grasslands, and instead made it a voluntary five-state program.

The Bill includes endangered species habitat incentives that would provide tax credits to landowners who place easements on their land, and roughly $300 million in tax deductions for voluntary actions that are recommended in Endangered Species Act Recovery Plans. The tax incentives effort has been championed by Environmental Defense, with the support of numerous environmental and conservation groups, as a way to create a voluntary program that rewards landowners for helping imperiled species.

Subsidies for ethanol distilled from corn will be reduced by six cents to 45 cents per gallon, and for the first time, funds will be made available to support production of cellulosic ethanol made from corn stalks and other agricultural waste. Cellulosic ethanol is a much more efficient biofuel that will not reduce food availability or cause increased food prices, as corn ethanol may be currently doing. Contact , ABC.