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US Pays Farmers Billions To Save The Soil. But It's Blowing Away (npr.org)
An anonymous reader shares an NPR report: Soil has been blowing away from the Great Plains ever since farmers first plowed up the prairie. It reached crisis levels during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when windblown soil turned day into night. In recent years, dust storms have returned, driven mainly by drought. But Shook -- and others -- say farmers are making the problem worse by taking land where grass used to grow and plowing it up, exposing vulnerable soil. This is where federal policy enters the picture. Most of that grassland was there in the first place because of a taxpayer-funded program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture rents land from farmers across the country and pays them to grow grass, trees and wildflowers in order to protect the soil and also provide habitat for wildlife. It's called the Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP. Ten years ago, there was more land in the CRP than in the entire state of New York. In North Dakota, CRP land covered 5,000 square miles. But CRP agreements only last 10 years, and when farming got more profitable about a decade ago, farmers in North Dakota pulled more than half of that land out of the CRP to grow crops like corn and soybeans. Across the country, farmers decided not to re-enroll 15.8 million acres of farmland in the CRP when those contracts expired between 2007 and 2014.
Use the land to grow weed. You don't really have to plow it.
Farming got more profitable when the government fully embraced ethanol. Farmers plowed under land to grow more corn to supply the government-funded ethanol plants that needed to go into gasoline by government mandate. Now the government is blaming farmers for farming and wanting to change the rules.
If you want the farmers to save their soil, you've got to let them go bankrupt.
Tense is everything, and tense is something the title and summary screws up royally.
Title says ...
however the summary says the US stopped paying the farmers that money, because the farmers ceased to renew the enrolments...
The title makes it sound like the farmers are taking the money and eschewing their responsibilities and allowing the soil to blow away - they aren't, those responsibilities expired when the money stopped flowing.
You're barking up the wrong tree. The number of family farms are few in comparison to the corporate-owned farms. It's the corporations that are raking in every available tax break. Previous generations of my family were farmers. When I expressed an interest in going to a community college with an agriculture program in the early 1990's, my father told me to forget about it as family farming was a dead end. I went to a community college known for its technology programs.
Tilth is farmers' fault. There are zero-tilth agricultural methods. Clearing is suppliers' fault. They effectively force farmers to clear woods around their property that would slow winds because it also harbors animals that might shit on the lettuce, or what have you. Instead of doing due diligence and actually inspecting produce, they just want to be able to handle it like it's made of plastic.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Stop subsidizing corn for corn syrup and ethanol. Make antibiotic use in grain lots illegal. Re-introduce large herds of ruminants to the areas that are no longer profitable to grow grains on. You know, like the Bison and others that actually created the great plains.
- US Dept. of Agriculture
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I don't know what happens to its price, but I know that then we can certainly make American high again.
#MAHA
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What happens to the price of that "grass" when 15.8 million acres of it are planted?
Billions of dollars stay in the American economy rather than going to violent gangs in Mexico and Colombia.
"Family farms" and corporate-owned farms are the same according to that report, so long as a majority shareholder does some work or has a relative that does some work on the farm.
By that measure, nearly every multinational corporation is a family business.
You know fully well what people mean when they say "Family-farm" yet chose to ignore the contents of the report for a severely lacking headline summary that reinforces your biases. At least you could have read the report you linked to which shows that your claim, using terms as they are expected, is wrong.
Monsanto's glyphosate, along with insecticides, are typically staples of no-till farming.
Yes, it is cheaper to produce grain with no-till chemical techniques, but what kind of long term damage to society will result?
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/05/06...
"Speaking at a symposium at Iowa State University on May 2, the day the census came out, Vilsack said the U.S. faces an "eroding middle" when it comes to farming, and that a small number of large farm operations "produces the vast majority of the nation's food." "
"However, three quarters of all U.S. farms gross only $50,000 a year and currently account for only 4 percent of product sales. But one analyst doesn't see that as a problem."
Just 4% of farms account for almost all u.s. sales.
The definition of farmer includes many tiny and unprofitable "farms" that are really more hobby or retirement plots than real farms. It's $1000 gross sales (so you can lose money every year and still be classed as a "farmer".)
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
There is another factor not covered. At least in Minnesota there used a be a property tax exemption for land that was under CRP. You would pay a significantly reduced property tax vs farmable land. They removed this exemption about 10 years ago now, and since that as CRP expires farmers would rather farm it, then pay the taxes as if they were farming it -- but without the associated yearly income.