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Show I minimi iiiiniiii 111111 1 111111 "mi iiiiiinii iiiiiiiiiiiminmiiiiii Western Resources WRAP-UP mm i miiiiiiiiiiiiiiii miiiiiiniiHwiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiHiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiuiiii Berg interview on soil conservation By Helene C. Monberg Vernal Express W ashington Correspondent ffashington-The U. S. Department f sericulture (USDA) has just miss-LiTeolden miss-LiTeolden opportunity to marry its 1 farm Payment in kind (PIK) pro-with pro-with its soil and water conser-Son conser-Son programs. That is the view of Norman A. Berg, m the recently retired Chief of the nSDA Soil Conservation Service and L of the leading soil conservationists the nation. He is now a senior ad-JL ad-JL to the American Farmland Trust and Washington representative of the Iowa-based Soil Conservation Society 0 America. "It is tragic" that PIK overlooked soil and water conservation, Berg told , Western Resources Wrap-up (WRW) in a lengthy interview on July 8 and in follow-up information that he provided provid-ed WRW this week. "Under PIK, soil and water conservation conser-vation is merely a by-product, only an afterthought," Berg said. And most of such criticism is coming from old soil conservation hands like himself, not by the major farm organizations, he noted. "We had spent 8-10 years inventorying inventory-ing the land and developing an appraisal ap-praisal and spelling out the alternatives alter-natives needed to protect our soil and water resource base under RCA," Berg stated. RCA is the 1977 Soil and Water Resources Conservation Act. "RCA wasn't even considered in PIK," Berg observed. The RCA study was completed last year. J The Administration tacitly concedes the point. The PIK program was laun-:hed laun-:hed hastily by USDA early this year - without new legislation or directions - from Congress with one aim in mind : to try to cut down on new production of wheat, corn, rice and cotton. As : there were already heavy surpluses of 5 these commodities, PIK was suppos-;: suppos-;: ed to cut both production and costs, :: thereby stabilizing farm prices and the deteriorating farm economy, by paying pay-ing farmers NOT to grow these crops. . The payments are in kind, in government-owned- surplus wheat, corn, rice and cotton, which the farmer can sell himself or use on his own farm. 1 The major criticism of PIK is not that USDA failed to use it as a 7 mechanism to promote soil and water ".. conservation, but that it failed to meet "p the twin goals of cutting production "... and costs. USDA now estimates that (arm support payments are expected to reach $21-22 billion this year, five times the costs of farm programs in ' 1981, and production has dropped on-ly on-ly moderately because farmers retired their least productive land. f SOU AND WATER CONSERVATION - INTEGRAL PART OF FARM - POLICY p Berg and R. Neil Sampson, ex-': ex-': ecutive vice president of the National Association of Conservation Districts a'ACD), are old friends, long-term : : allies in the conservation movement, :: md "ley are convinced that the nation ..- should avoid another PIK experience, t "Soil conservation should be in- tegrated with other farm programs," ! Berg told WRW, because it is an in- - egral part of both farm output for the lng term and good land husbandry. He likened good conservation prac- - toes to an insurance policy in a recent interview in Farmland, the newsletter (; ''the American Farmland Trust. , 'It's hard to determine precisely the j "a'ue of conservation practices. Remember, agriculture is the most wgh-risk business there is. It depends ; circumstances beyond your control s every day of the week, every week of ' e year- Conservation practices can m the difference between getting 5 acroPandnotgettingone. It's not just "natter of higher yields. Conserva- s something like an insurance t' Jllcy in this sense. You're investing ""guard against a wipeout as much as 10 8t a better return... 'Anything we as a nation do to im- Pair our agricultural future is going lJ wn the wrong road. We're taking i, options for our children and iH- dchilclren, taking away from the prance policy that we should have," 8 told Farmland. j Sampson, a generation younger and J ;erg protege, hammered away at r J same point at a hearing of the Joint gnomic Committee on June 22. "It JT contention that any successful irm f kd Water conservation policy Jp an integral part of farm , lcy. not something that is tacked on sin atte"hought...The more inten-' inten-' lib! agricu)tural use, the more ' dam ")e land is t0 suffer soil ma8e" Sampson testified. lvrg told WRW he was particular- sid ernJenied t conservation be con- ... M m the making of farm policy y ause farm policies that we put U in a, today will affect people living a ton 1ext century- There should be I and I , ether of farm Plicv and soU prehp S conservation in a com-"sive com-"sive setting. We already know y in therearenow four million people wrld, and that there will be six million in the world by 2000. How are we going to feed them? It is scary to contemplate," Berg stated in the WRW interview. SERIOUS EROSION PROBLEMS PULLING AT THE WEB Berg said in his recent interview in Farmland that the RCA soil erosion assessment data "show that we have some very serious problems" that add up "to millions of acres of farmland and millions of tons of soil lost every year. People travel the interstates and don't see it. The country looks pretty much the same from an airplane. Ultimately, I think we have to realize that we are pulling at the corner of a spider web, the ecological relationship of soil and food and people. The whole web is shivering a bit, and if we're not careful, it will disintegrate." Berg frequently cites, as he did to WRW and Farmland, how quickly and stealthily that ecological web can be assaulted. He uses West Tennessee as an example, partially because of its current erosion problems and partially because he has worked with Rep. Ed Jones, D-Tenn., on the recent erosion difficulties that have afflicted his West Tennessee district. Jones is chairman of the Conservation Subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee and is sponsor of a recently introduced comprehensive conservation bill (HR 3457). Berg outlined the West Tennessee situation as follows: "We had excellent ex-cellent land and water conservation in West Tennessee a decade ago. There were livestock systems, and if you can work livestock into a farm enterprise, then you've got a good chance of setting set-ting aside the marginal land for either hay or pasture, and that was being done. (So was) rotation of crops (which) also makes it possible to rebuild the organic foundation of the soil. But then the price of soybeans started rising and that moved that country from a stable conservation system to one of our most serious soil loss areas. Beans paid more than livestock. So there are larger, major economic forces at work here eroding soil, he said. Consequently, Berg is a strong supporter sup-porter of both the Jones comprehensive comprehen-sive soil conservation bill (HR 3457) and the two sodbuster's bills (S 663 and HR 1077) by Sen. William L. Armstrong, Arm-strong, R-Colo., and Rep. Hank Brown, R-Colo., which withhold price support assistance from land owners who plow up highly erodible land and put it in crops. The Jones bill contains a sodbuster's provision and also provides pro-vides that a farmerrancher will not lose his crop history because of a good conservation system. A third provision provides for outright payments to farmersranchers to keep their highly erosive lands out of crop production. "These bills have focused attention on soil erosion. They are the only game in town," Berg told WRW. He has testified in favor of the sodbuster's bills. Berg recently listed for the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation the other "growing threats" to sustained, long-range agricultural production in addition to soil erosion as follows: Continued conversion of prime farm land to uses other than farming. Loss of fertility and soil compaction compac-tion from monocultured (ie., one crop) grain production. Water quality and quantity problems pro-blems that have substantial impacts on agriculture. About 60 percent of non-federal rangeland producing at less than its potential. Present food abundance is increasingly in-creasingly dependent on unnatural conditions such as irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, etc. The American Farmland Trust, for which Berg is a senior advisor, was established two years ago to "keep prime land available for farming." Berg is pushing hard to get the USDA to issue criteria to be used by other agencies in determining land use. Under the 1981 Farm Act (PL 97-98), this provision requires officials to consider con-sider alternatives to taking prime farm land out of production. It never has been implemented by the Ad-minstration. Ad-minstration. Berg told WRW, "The federal agencies should receive guidance from the Secretary (of Agriculture) to evaluate their programs pro-grams by the criteria" yet to be formulated. for-mulated. Until this is done, Berg warned, warn-ed, "three million acres of land annually an-nually are being moved from agricultural to non-agricultural uses, one-third of which is important land to farming." He is also pushing for two other provisions of the 1981 law yet to be implemented, both providing aid to areas with special erosion problems and to local governments to encourage "grass-roots" conservation. |