By JAMIE SEARS RAWLINGS

Kentucky Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Industry trade organizations such as the U.S. Cattleman’s Assoc., the National Farmers Union and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition are reaching out to members this week using words like “deeply concerning” and “disappointed” to highlight their issues with the initial House proposal 2018 federal farm bill.

They are decrying the House Agriculture Committee’s draft Agriculture and Nutrition Act largely because of cuts to total funding for the conservation title of almost $1 billion, with additional cuts of $5 billion over the next 10 years.

Also at the top of the list of issues are changes proposed to the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). Under the House draft, CSP – a working lands program that incentivizes growers, producers and ranchers for improving and maintaining conservation practices on their lands – would be rolled into EQIP.

“At large, when we look at a conservation title that cuts funding by nearly $1 billion over 10 years, that’s deeply concerning as we think about, what is the entire toolbox of funding that is available to support conservation?” said Alyssa Charney, senior policy specialist for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

“When you look at those overall funding levels as well as some of the programmatic shifts that happen within the title, it’s deeply concerning.”

The merger of the two programs is a move that framers of the bill believe will reduce complexities and save funds. “The Environmental Quality Incentives Program has been a useful tool for farmers to identify and address specific conservation and resource concerns,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), a member of the committee.

“The Agriculture and Nutrition Act takes the best parts of the Conservation Stewardship Program and rolls them into EQIP to create a single, easy-to-understand working lands program instead a web of different programs and applications.

“The savings from consolidating these programs resulted in the ability to strengthen other priority farm bill programs, including an extra $7.7 billion in EQIP funding over 10 years, according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates,” he said.

Alyssa Charney, senior policy specialist for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, believes the merger is “smoke and mirrors” politics.

“CSP is the only comprehensive conservation program that looks at an operation in terms of all of the land that is part of the operation and really sets high goals in terms of addressing resource concerns,” she noted. “The proposal that we’ve seen from the House, while it’s framed and pitched as just folding CSP into EQIP, in reality what it proposes to do is get rid of all of those key components of the program that gets us high-level conservation.

“We’re concerned both from the perspective of what does this mean for farmers and ranchers who rely on these programs and the unique services that each provide, and what also does this mean for implications in terms of their ability to protect and enhance natural resources.”

Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), who serves as minority member of the House Ag Committee, has expressed similar concerns for the draft bill. “Unlike past farm bills, which were done in a truly bipartisan fashion, this one was done in a backroom where Democrats weren’t allowed,” she said.

“While I’m alarmed by the process, I’m much more concerned by how this bill could hurt thousands of hard-working farmers across the heartland by slashing funding for conservation, rural development and other proven job-creating programs in rural America.”

Charney expects the House draft with minor markups to proceed to a vote this month, so her organization has turned its advocacy focus to the Senate, which has the ability to make changes before a final vote.

“On the Senate side, everything that we hear from Chairman (Pat) Roberts (R-Kan.) and Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) is really that they are not interested in throwing the conservation title on its head in the same way that the House did,” she said.

Bustos has a similar outlook for the Senate’s actions.

“It’s no secret that this partisan bill will not pass in the Senate, so I am hopeful that Washington Republicans will drop this effort and instead work with us to draft a bipartisan farm bill that will help Illinois’ farmers and agricultural producers during these tough times,” she said.

Moving forward, Charney hopes the Senate will protect the integrity of the two conservation programs while allowing for improvements to both. “We do definitely think there are opportunities to even further improve and enhance these programs,” she said.

“Nobody is claiming that CSP is perfect, but the solution to fixing those challenges is absolutely not to eliminate an entire program. Really, we see an opportunity to protect these programs but also to make them work better in terms of accessibility for farmers, for the ease that they work for field staff, as well as for their ability to incentivize and ensure that we are getting high-level conservation activities on the ground.”

Despite the opposition, Comer stands by the House draft.

“Crafting the farm bill to fit within our current fiscal constraints was a tall task and some programs did see cuts, but I am proud of the product the Agriculture Committee produced, and confident the Agriculture and Nutrition Act will provide our farmers and ranchers the resources they need to continue to feed and fuel the world,” he said.