There's no final draft of the Farm Bill yet, but incoming House Ag Committee chair, Minnesota Seventh District Congressman Collin Peterson shared the potential demise pollinator habitat programs with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Gunderson and Elizabeth Dunbar in Peterson: New farm bill preserves status quo, but will it help farmers enough?:
The Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to set aside land for conservation, will grow by 3 million acres, he said. But Peterson added that payments will be capped and landowners won't be able to get extra money to pay for things like planting pollinator habitat. "We're trying to simplify the seed, trying to get rid of the pollinator habitat stuff, trying to get this back to what it used to be," he said. "If I had my way, we'd have alfalfa and bromegrass," grown for cattle feed, in the program.
Forum Communications' Mikkel Pates echoes that report in Safety net mostly intact in new farm bill, Rep. Peterson says:
Increases the Conservation Reserve Program by 3 million acres but reforms how it works. “You will not be able to afford to put good land in the CRP,” Peterson said. Payments will be a “market-based approach — capping payments at 90 percent of the county rental rates for the continuous signup and at 85 percent for the general signup, which will occur every year. “We’ve already heard some squealing about that … because people got used to getting paid twice as much as the rental rate for CRP, and it has to stop,” Peterson said. He said the reason is there have been “all of these boutique programs that require $500-per-acre seed, and they claim they need all this money because they’re spending money on it.” He would get rid of pollinator habitat seed, which has produced weed patches. “If I had my way we’d have alfalfa and brome grass” for the CRP plantings, Peterson said.
Lovely. The Minnesota DNR lists smooth brome grass as a terrestrial invasive species.
To learn more about pollinator protection, we recommend readers check out the links at the MN DNR's Minnesota Pollinator Resources. The decline of pollinators threatens the world's food supply, but perhaps not on Planet Collin.
Photo: Pollinators need help but Congressman Collin Peterson doesn't want to provide it.
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