Walz issues statement on Conservative Security Program

Through an email update from the Minnesota Farmers Union, we learned that Congressman Walz had issued a statement on the Conservation Security Program that had been released to the ag community.  The MFU's Director of Government Relations sent us a copy, as did the Walz communications staff.

Note that Walz is also concerned about funding the Wetlands Reserve Program, which is important for wildlife habitat, so he doesn't want to rob that program to pay for CSP.  The statement:

The Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, Energy and Research, on which Congressman Tim Walz proudly serves, met yesterday to consider provisions of  the 2007 Farm bill.  The meeting included the first mark-up of the conservation, credit, energy and research titles.  Congressman Walz made the following statement in support of the Conservation Security Program:

Statement for the Record
Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, Energy and Research
May 22, 2007

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Lucas, thank you for how you have conducted this process.  It has been very open and very inclusive and that is to your credit.  You have given us a good starting point with this Chairman's mark and I look forward to debating it and trying to make it even better. 

And, in my opinion, there are some places we can make some definite improvements. 

One of the biggest problems in my mind is how this Chairman's mark treats the Conservation Security Program.

In preparation for these markups, I held about 14 Farm Bill forums around southern Minnesota.  I talked to hundreds of producers about what they liked in the current Farm Bill, what they didn't like, what they wanted to see changed.  Now, if you get 100 farmers in a room, you'll be lucky if you can find a single thing they agree on.  But, I'll tell you this: they agreed about CSP.

There is almost universal agreement in rural America that the Conservation Security Program represents the direction in which agriculture should move. It is popular, it is easy to explain to people who don't understand the farm program, it is WTO-friendly, and it is common-sense: pay people for making conservation benefits to their land.

Now, CSP has its problems.  USDA has administered it on a watershed-by-watershed basis that means people have to wait years for the chance to enroll.  When their chance comes around, they have to fill out a
three-inch stack of paperwork.  And once they're in the program, sometimes they don't get the payments they were promised.

But, Mr. Chairman, to me the solution to that problem is simple: try to solve those complaints.  Don't just scrap the whole program.

But, unfortunately, this Chairman's mark makes no new investments in CSP through 2012.  It puts CSP on life support until we can rescue it in some future farm bill.  I am deeply disappointed in that.  And so are producers in southern Minnesota. I know that, because they've spent the last two days calling me to tell me so.  And I have to be honest:  if the final version of this Farm Bill doesn't make some real improvements to the CSP language we have here, I'm going to have a hard time supporting it.

But I want to be fair: our Chairman and Ranking Member have done a good job with the tools they had to work with.  This budget situation they have to deal with is extremely unfriendly.  And I think it is ludicrous to give the Agriculture Committee less money than it had five years ago and also give us a longer to-do list and expect us to accomplish all of those goals. 

If we are serious about renewable energy and conservation and rural development and nutrition and research and maintaining a farm safety net and all of those other things we talk about, then we need to see some new sources of funding.  But, unfortunately, that funding was not made available to us. 

I want to talk about another important program.  The Chairman's mark provides an expansion of the Wetland Reserve Program to 3.775 million acres if reserve funding is available and if not, 2.275 million acres, which is the current cap.  Some Members may know that, in FY05, Minnesota was number two in the nation when it came to unfunded easement applications and unfunded easement acres for WRP, so this program is very important to my state.

There is also a provision in this Chairman's mark which allows for 10,000 acres annually for floodplains within WRP.  This would allow us to reconnect rivers to floodplains that have been isolated from the river by levees.  I look forward to working with the Chairman and Ranking Member to find funding for the wetland reserve program.

In his first franking piece mailed to southern Minnesotans a couplr of months ago, Walz said he wanted to hear people's ideas about what they wanted to see in their Farm Bill. From the statement, it looks like his promise to listen and bring those ideas to Washington is being followed through.