1. THE FARMLAND STEWARDSHIP PROGRAM IS COST-EFFECTIVE. It eliminates needless expense, paperwork and delay, so that limited tax dollars can be used, not for administration, but for putting conservation on the ground.

FOR EXAMPLE: Bill Horan, President, Iowa Corn Growers Association, stated on May 23, 2002 in testimony before the House Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, Rural Development and Research, that he has stopped using federal cost share programs. This is because it costs him just as much, and takes almost twice as long, to participate in a federal cost-share program to install conservation filter strips on his property as it does to do it on his own. Horan said the consultant he uses to install conservation practices charges twice as much when a federal cost-share program is used because of the amount of additional paperwork involved, and because of the difficulties encountered on each and every project in adapting federal policies to local conditions so the conservation practices that are being installed will work in the conditions that are actually encountered in the field.

2. THE FARMLAND STEWARDSHIP PROGRAM AVOIDS "UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES." Programs designed with good intentions, but implemented in an inflexible, top-down fashion can have unintended (and damaging) consequences.

FOR EXAMPLE: Mary Jo Forbord, a dairy farmer in Starbuck, MN, wrote Oct. 14: "The Farmland Stewardship concept is EXACTLY what my husband and I have been wanting, a sort of precision conservation … I've spoken with numerous government program people who tell me, ‘I can see where tailoring plans to individual farms makes sense, and is probably the way it should be. But the reality is, we have programs that if you do what the program tells you, you get the money.’ They are frustrated with people who break up highly erodible hillsides of native prairie to get a ‘crop’ for 3 years so they can qualify for CRP… Still, they say, ‘It is not our mandate to work with people who are doing voluntary conservation according to the needs they have on their farm.’"

How many conservation programs are in effect? An answer was provided last July 20 during mark up hearings of HR 701, the Conservation and Reinvestment Act (CARA), in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. A committee member distributed a 12-page list showing more than 600 different programs available through almost a dozen agencies. While all are not appropriate for agriculture, scores are. Yet the vast majority of these are completely unknown to farmers and ranchers – and the agency officials who work with them on conservation issues. In fact, there’s no system to keep track of all these programs, let alone help producers find out if they qualify.

For a full list of benefits, go to www.privatelands.org/35_benefits.htm