A change to farm bill conservation efforts could spell disaster for the corn belt

The Conservation Stewardship Program began as the Conservation Security Program in the 2002 Farm Bill, and its current iteration was first authorized in the 2008 bill. The nation’s leading conservation program by acreage, CSP pays farmers to improve their practices in ways that benefit the air, water, and soil without taking land out of rotation like the Conservation Reserve Program requires them to do. It focuses on continual conservation and bases compensation on several factors, including time and resources invested and the expected degree of conservation benefits.As of 2017, CSP covered an estimated 72 million acres; the vast majority of those acres are on large, conventional farms such as the thousands of Iowa corn and soy operations that surround Echollective—operations where farmers are generally less likely to have conservation practices on their to-do lists without funding.The future of the program and Echollective’s contract are uncertain, however. The 2014 Farm Bill expired on September 30 after Congress proved unable to agree on a new bill, in part because of disputes over CSP and debate over cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).The House of Representatives has proposed cutting CSP and rolling its “best features” into the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), a similar conservation program for working lands without a long-term commitment. If this happened, EQIP would absorb $3 billion previously allocated for CSP. The Senate’s more moderate farm bill, on the other hand, would maintain the status quo and maintain the separate programs. Either way, the direction Congress goes will have major implications for farmers and natural resources around the U.S.