Tom Harkin: “I came to Congress in 1975 and served in the House until 1984, when I was elected to the Senate. As a member of the…”

“I came to Congress in 1975 and served in the House until 1984, when I was elected to the Senate. As a member of the House Agriculture Committee and later the Senate Agriculture Committee I have always known the importance of agriculture conservation. My home State of Iowa is rich in agriculture and also rich in the tradition of conservation. But even in Iowa, we recognize the need for more conservation. For decades we had cost-share money available for producers through the Agriculture Conservation Program. But, it was not until 1990 that a farm bill took the next critical step toward conservation by including my Water Quality Incentives Program. This program, for the first time in agriculture history, included incentive payments for producers. The basic concepts and principles of WQIP were the foundation for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, EQIP, included in the 1996 farm bill. EQIP, which expanded beyond water quality to all natural resources, was a fundamental advancement for conservation on working lands. However, even with these advances we were still spending over 90 percent of conservation dollars on land retirement programs, namely CRP and WRP. While these two programs are critically important, it became abundantly clear that conservation on working lands needed to be addressed. EQIP was hugely popular among farmers and ranchers, but the dollars were limited and many, many, many producers were left stranded--unable to access this program.”