Ron Kind: “to a farmer, `erosion' is the progressive loss of some of the best means to robust and sustained production from their…”

“to a farmer, `erosion' is the progressive loss of some of the best means to robust and sustained production from their lands. It is one of the most expensive and difficult problems threatening their liveliehood--but, fortunately, it is a loss many farmers prevent by enrolling some of their marginal working lands in voluntary conservation programs. Now, Mr. Chairman, I mention this because of the cynical irony at hand--today, it is Congress that must act to prevent another form of `erosion', the erosion of legislation this Congress passed with great debate just one year ago--the 2002 Farm Bill. At the time, I led an effort to increase funding to conservation programs that are available to all farmers because I strongly believed the 2002 Farm Bill to be too heavily weighted to primarily assisting the largest growers of a few commodity crops in a handful of states. Because of this lopsided tilt toward commodity subsidization, many who are not eligible--including dairy farmers, ranchers and fruit and vegetable farmers--rely upon conservation programs to boost farm and ranch income and to ease the cost of environmental compliance. I argued that a small shift in funds from the commodity programs to voluntary conservation programs would significantly help more farmers in more regions of the country. At the end of the debate, conservation programs made some gains, though not all that I had sought.”