Of Carrots, Sticks & Farm Bills
The Farm Bill debate, if one can call it that, is ongoing. Many, if not most, outcomes remain in doubt and the House of Representatives’ version is anathema to reform. And conservation of our soil and water, well, on that topic Congress has fundamentally failed the American people, and not just this year and in this Farm Bill.
I am both an erstwhile Iowan and a new resident of the Hawkeye State. When I was relocation to Iowa back on January 15, 2024 I reflected on the state of the land, water and natural environment to which I was returning to after a 23 year absence. And that prompted me to pen this:
[Author’s Note] — I’m beginning this post with an excerpt of most of a letter that I wrote and was published in my local paper —
Of carrots, sticks and conservation | Oelwein Daily Register | — January 31, 2024
… I am troubled by how many lakes, rivers and streams across the state – over 750 – are polluted by nitrates and other pollutants in manure from industrial livestock operations and commercial fertilizer applied in excess to cropland.
Iowa’s legislators and Congressional delegation see a dilemma in cleaning up the state’s water. Namely, whether to use carrots (incentives) or sticks (regulations) to reverse the diminishment of Iowa’s water quality.
They should reconsider the concept of conservation compliance, which was once an important aspect of farm, crop insurance and conservation programs. Conservation compliance works as both carrot and stick, and can help reverse agricultural and industrial pollution of Iowa’s waterways. If only we have the will to try.
It is appropriate, and necessary, to link public subsidies such as crop insurance subsidies with conservation to prevent nitrates and other pollutants from getting into the water in the first place. I mean, come on, if we are willing to subsidize crop insurance premiums on every farmed acre, even for Iowa’s largest mega-operations, then is it too much to ask subsidized operations to make real, impactful efforts to conserve and protect Iowa’s soil and water?
I’m posting this here, bringing it forward to today, as it were, not because I believe it is the most important policy consideration for this or any other farm bill, but because it emanates from a foundational principle that I have held all my life regarding farm and rural policy.
Namely, that principle is this — when, in farm bills or any other farm, ranch or rural policy, we encourage and subsidize bigness, then the nation’s largest farms just keep getting bigger. And that bias toward bigness in turn undermines the success of smaller farms and bars the door to a new generation of beginning farmers and ranchers, including women, farmers of color and many others.
Moreover, when we abandon conservation, especially the very expectations for conservation that historically accompanied farm subsidies, then we double down on the destruction of our soil, water and natural environment as well as the lives and health of the people who live in rural and small-town America, and Iowa in particular.
So I wrote this letter to the letter above to the Oelwein Daily Register, because it is one small piece, albeit an important one, of the necessary reforms of America’s farm and ranch policy… e.g. the Farm Bill. I have posted it here today because I want to begin engaging more, much more, in the conversation about America’s farm and ranch policy and the abysmal impact those policies have had on our communities out here in rural America.
Oh, I closed the letter to the Daily Register with this question, “I mean, come on, if we are willing to subsidize crop insurance premiums on every farmed acre, even for Iowa’s largest mega-operations, then is it too much to ask subsidized operations to make real, impactful efforts to conserve and protect Iowa’s soil and water?”
The answer, btw, is no, it is not too much to ask.