Agencies agree on conservation rules
Federal program, which will hold a sign-up in August, will pay farmers for maintaining and increasing conservation activities.
USDA has reached agreement with OMB on the rules for the Conservation Stewardship Program and will hold a sign-up for the program in August, a senior USDA official said on Monday.
The Conservation Stewardship Program, written into the 2008 farm bill by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, will pay farmers for increasing their level of conservation practices, maintaining existing conservation activities and adopting resource-conserving crop rotations.
USDA Natural Resources and Conservation Service Chief Dave White made the announcement to a National Association of Conservation Districts meeting in Washington.
While White did not provide details, the Obama administration's approach to agriculture and climate change is likely to come up again on Wednesday, when EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson will appear before the Senate Agriculture Committee to testify on the subjects.
Larry Elworth, Jackson's agriculture adviser, told the NACD the Obama administration wants to make sure farmers know climate change and dependence on foreign energy supplies, particularly for the production of fertilizer, will have "enormous" impacts on agriculture.
The NACD represents 3,000 county-level conservation districts that were established in the 1930s. It does not have a position on the House-passed climate change bill, and it has not stated whether a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions should be established. But it supported the amendment that House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., added to the House bill, according to Earl Gruber, an NACD vice president.