I received this action alert yesterday from The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. We have until September 28 to tell the USDA to base Conservation Stewardship Program application approval on environmental outcomes, not on when a conservation practice is implemented. See below:

Since the 1930s, we've been paying farmers to produce corn, wheat, rice and cotton. What if we paid farmers for producing healthier soil, cleaner water, climate change mitigation and greater bio-diversity instead? That's the "Big Idea" behind the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). Pay farmers to produce environmental outcomes that contribute to the public good.

Sustainable and organic farming advocates have an important, urgent opportunity to help shape the implementation of this working lands conservation program. The USDA has requested comments on the administrative rules that will govern implementation of the new CSP.  

The USDA is considering giving a higher rank to CSP applications proposing the adoption of new conservation practices vs. the maintenance of existing practices. Current rules give equal weight to existing and proposed conservation practices. Please tell the USDA that CSP applications should be ranked on the basis of environmental outcomes and not on the basis of when a conservation practice is implemented.  

The USDA has posed a specific question for comment:  Should the program give greater weight and therefore a higher rank and a higher likelihood of acceptance into the program to applications proposing new conservation practices? Or should existing and new practices be given equal weight?  

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and other conservation programs pay farmers to adopt new conservation practices. The CSP, however, is unique among working lands conservation programs. The CSP rewards farmers who are already farming at a high stewardship threshold and provides an incentive to maintain those high stewardship standards.  

If a farmer has previously adopted advanced conservation measures and systems, the program is designed to reward that behavior and help pay for continued active management and maintenance of those systems and practices. Farmers should also be expected to and be rewarded for adopting new practices. But CSP ranking and payments should be keyed to environmental outcomes and not on when conservation activities are adopted.

CSP design and regulation should equally balance the benefits of both existing and new practices with the primary measure being the environmental benefits secured by the total conservation system regardless of the timing of adoption of various parts of the system. This is essential to making CSP a program that recognizes and rewards the multiple benefits of sustainable and organic farming systems.  

Comment letters can be as short or as long as you want. Put your comments in your own words, and raise the points most important to you. You can submit a comment from the National Sustainable Agriculture website, or you can email comments directly to the USDA at CSP2008@wdc.usda.gov.  
 
If you send your own email:  Be sure to identify the Docket Number at the top of your letter:  RE:  NRCS-IFR-09004. Address your comment letter to: Mr. Gregory Johnson, Director, Financial Assistance Programs, US Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service, 1400 Independence Avenue SW, Room 5237-S, Washington, DC 20250-2890. Be sure to identify yourself by providing your name and contact information. You may also mail your letter to this address if you prefer not to email it. The deadline is September 28.

If you’ve ever found yourself thinking that we’re overly critical of factory farms, take a moment to read this nauseating profile of Smithfield Foods’ hog farms from Rolling Stone magazine. 

Author Jeff Tietz reports that “Smithfield estimates that its total sales will reach $11.4 billion this year. So prodigious is its fecal waste, however, that if the company treated its effluvia as big-city governments do — even if it came marginally close to that standard — it would lose money.” That’s a lot of poop, people. 

The article goes on to tell about farms littered with pig carcasses (as many as ten percent of factory-farm hogs die before slaughter due to the conditions in which they live, according to one study), and about people succumbing to the fumes from hog waste lagoons. Lagoons, which, according to Tietz, contain a combination of toxic substances such as ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide, phosphorous, nitrates and heavy metals (not to mention  your typical gut-wrenchers: salmonella, cryptosporidium, streptocolli and giardia). 

If, like any good capitalist, you want to send Smithfield a message by avoiding its products, here’s a list of brands that sell their meat. What is Paula Deen thinking, ya’ll?

Photo by iStockphoto/Bruce Works

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Experienced crop farmers know that if they want to keep their soil fertile and healthy from year to year, they should enlist the help of a good cover crop. Cover crops such as rye grass or alfalfa, planted in unused plots over the non-growing season, provide a host of benefits: reduced erosion, fewer pests, increased mineral content (thanks to their deep roots), and valuable organic matter (when converted to mulch or compost). Plus, they reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers and other expensive amenities.  

Managing Cover Crops Profitably, 3^rd Edition, published by the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program, can be downloaded from their website, and includes expert advice from researchers and farmers nationwide. There are farm profiles, seed sources, and region-specific recommendations. Print copies are available here. 

For more advice on cover crops and soil health, read Build Better Garden Soil, and 8 Strategies for Better Garden Soil.

If you’ve got a weed problem, we’ve got the solution: goats. All across the nation, frustrated landowners are turning to these animals, who happily munch away on much-hated noxious weeds and other invasive plants without so much as a drop of gasoline. Renting goat herds has become a popular, affordable and effective way to control weed problems and reduce the need for herbicides — read more in this article from The New York Times. And don’t forget to check out Interview with the World’s Best Weed Eater, Mother Earth News’ exclusive interview with a real live goat!

iStockphoto/Judy McPhail

The next president of the United States will have a lot on his plate. Energy, the economy, foreign relations, healthcare … these may be the main dishes on the current political agenda menu, but it would be a very bad idea to overlook another that seems to be simmering on the back burner: food policy. 

Many thanks to Michael Pollan, who pointed this out in an excellent letter published in The New York Times Magazine. In it he urges the president-elect to consider a food garden on the White House Lawn and rethink the subsidies that are shaping the current landscape of industrial agriculture. He urges our future “farmer in chief” to decentralize our food system, thus increasing the security and safety of our food. Most importantly, he identifies the connection between a sound food policy and high-profile issues such as healthcare, energy independence and climate change. 

Take a look! This is a comprehensive plan from someone who really knows their stuff.

Photo by ISTOCKPHOTO/Melih Kesmen

Everyone has their own opinion of the new farm bill, also known as the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008. But most of us will concede that while outrageous subsidy payments to the largest of producers once again evaded cuts, drawing further indignation from the World Trade Organization (and prompting threats of trade sanctions against us), the legislation contained some heartening support for many environmental and conservation initiatives. 

Was that all just a ploy to divert our attention from the subsidies and get the bill passed? That may be the case — the Environmental Working Group reported recently that Congress is now planning to introduce a bill that will cut millions in funding for these conservation-related programs, on a state-by-state basis. Click here to see whose slice of the pie is shrinking, and by how much.

Secretary Ed Schafer of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced that farmers will not be released from their Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contracts without penalty, due to favorable crop and weather forecasts, upward pricing trends in grain markets, and other factors. The USDA has been under pressure to allow farmers to opt-out of the CRP program without penalty in response to losses caused by recent flooding in the Midwest. 

According to Schafer, the amount of land enrolled in the program is already on its way to being reduced, thanks to a provision in the 2008 farm bill that lowers the cap on the total number of acres allowed in the program. More than 2 million acres must be removed, and over a million acres are protected in contracts set to expire on September 30. Another 3 million acres will be up for grabs in 2009, and over 4 million acres in 2010.  Re-enrollment is unlikely with the soaring demand for corn.

Read more about CRP here and here.