a four-fold rise - Center for Food Safety

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Center for Food Safety – Science Comments – FG72 Soybean 64 iv. Federal farm policy triggered sharp declines in soil erosion prior to HR crop adoption The other question raised by NRCS’ report is this: what explains the sharp declines in soil erosion in ALL farm production regions, including Corn Belt and Northern Plains states, in the 1982 to 1997 period before any appreciable adoption of HR crops? The decline in soil erosion over this period is also consistent with increased use of conservation tillage in soybeans from 1990 to 1995, as displayed in Figure 11 above. The answer is clear. Strong financial incentives to adopt soil-‐saving farming practices contained in the 1985 and 1990 Farm Bills were chiefly responsible for increased use of conservation tillage. According to Coughenour and Chamala (2000), authors of a book examining the history of conservation tillage in the U.S. and Australia: There is little mystery about what brought a sea change in farmers' tillage decisions as the 1990s unfolded. The compliance provisions of the 1985 Farm Bill and the 1990 amendments dramatically altered the effective policy and institutional environment. Farmers who wanted governmental support payments had to begin implementing their farm conservation plans (FCPs) by 1995, and their plans often included provision for conservation tillage. The balance of factors favoring use of no-‐tillage systems has also been strengthened by the progressive change in the cultural climate favoring farmers’ acceptance of program requirements and changes in farming practice. (p. 286, emphases added) v. Weakening enforcement of farm conservation plans brings soil erosion reductions to an end Soon after the 1995 deadline for implementation of farm conservation plans had passed, however, enforcement of these plans dramatically weakened, and further progress in preventing soil erosion was stymied. As explained by the Environmental Working Group: In 1997, after a decade of historic progress cutting soil erosion and polluted runoff from farmers’ fields, America’s soil, streams, lakes and rivers were improving. That historic achievement was driven by a 1985 federal law that required farmers to put conservation practices in place on their most vulnerable cropland in return for the billions of dollars of income and insurance subsidies they were getting from taxpayers. The “Highly Erodible Land Conservation” provisions of the 1985 Food Security Act required farmers to fully implement an approved soil conservation plan by 1995 on cropland that was determined to be “highly erodible.” USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) completed a comprehensive evaluation of those so-‐called conservation compliance provisions in 2004. ERS concluded that conservation compliance reduced soil erosion on highly erodible cropland by 331 million tons a year — a 40 percent reduction between 1982 and 1997 (USDA ERS 2004). Unfortunately, those gains were short-lived. Enforcement of conservation requirements weakened and in 1996 went off the rails altogether when Congress made an abortive push to phase out farm subsidies — and with them the conservation requirements. The phase-‐out of farm subsidies turned
Center for Food Safety – Science Comments – FG72 Soybean 65 out to be a mirage, and Congress immediately returned to its old habits — plowing billions into farmers’ hands through ad hoc disaster payments and bringing all the farm subsidies back with a vengeance in the 2002 farm bill. The only thing that turned out to be real was the phase-out of enforcement of conservation requirements. The result has been a decade of lost progress and mounting problems. (EWG 2011, p. 28, emphases added). In short, sharp reductions in soil erosion from the mid-‐1980s to the mid-‐1990s were driven by federal farm policy that made subsidies to farmers contingent on implementation of soil conservation plans. Dramatic weakening of USDA enforcement of those plans in the mid-‐ 1990s explains the leveling off of soil erosion rates from 1997 to 2007. HR crops, adopted during this same decade, had essentially no influence on farmers’ use of conservation tillage practices. USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service also credits federal farm policy as being “largely responsible” for increased use of soil-‐conserving cultivation practices. In a short work referenced by APHIS (DEA at 35), NRCS experts state: Total acres of conservation tillage systems rose steadily in the late 1980s to 37.2% of all planted acres in 1998 (Figure 2b). The implementation of Farm Bill Compliance standards containing residue management practices was largely responsible for much of this increased adoption (USDA-‐NRCS 2006, p. 3). “Residue management practices” refer to conservation tillage practices. From: USDA ERS AREI (2002), p. 23
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