Overview
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Some farming practices (excess fertilization and manure, for
example) can degrade our Nation's natural resources while others
(such as preserving land for wildlife) can enhance our natural
heritage. USDA conservation programs offer producers a range
of options for assistance with conservation efforts:
- Working-land programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives
Program provide technical and financial assistance to farmers who
install or maintain conservation practices on land in
production.
- Land retirement programs like the Conservation Reserve Program
remove land from agricultural production for at least 10
years.
- Agricultural land preservation programs like the Farm and Ranch
Lands Protection Program purchase rights to certain land uses, such
as development.
- Conservation Technical Assistance (CTA) provides ongoing
technical assistance for installing environmental practices like
riparian buffers.
ERS tracks conservation program funding levels and analyzes
trends in support for these four categories of conservation
spending. ERS research examines the cost-effectiveness and
equity of agri-environmental policies and programs, with an
emphasis on identifying conservation program design features that
increase environmental gain per program dollar. ERS also
investigates the environmental impact of broader agricultural
policies and programs on land use, input use, and conservation
practice adoption. Research findings highlight the many
tradeoffs involved in program design:
- "Green payments"--payments that serve both farm income and
conservation objectives-could require that policy makers trade one
objective off against the other. Conservation programs can support
farm income but at a potential cost in terms of environmental
gains. Commodity programs can be made "greener" but likely will not
fix every agri-environmental problem or do so
cost-effectively.
- Incentives for environmental compliance, which explicitly link
environmental and income objectives, could be sharply reduced on
some farms if direct payments are eliminated to help reduce the
Federal budget deficit. The future of compliance may depend
on linking compliance to other existing or new farm programs.
- "Targeting" conservation efforts through eligibility
requirements, participation incentives, or enrollment screens can
be used to focus payments on fields, practices, or specific
resource concerns most likely to generate the greatest
environmental benefits.
- Bidding--a process in which farmers compete in an auction for
conservation payment contracts-integrates market-like features into
conservation programs and can reveal the costs of participating and
the benefits program applicants would likely supply. Feeding those
bids into benefit-cost indices to enroll producers enhances the
cost effectiveness of conservation programs.
- Paying farmers to adopt specific conservation practices and
paying for the level of environmental performance are two different
approaches with distinct benefits. Paying for performance is more
cost effective than paying for practices because program incentives
are directly linked to environmental outcomes. These outcomes,
however, are not easy to observe, making performance-based payments
difficult and costly to implement. Payments that focus on practices
with high expected benefits may be a practical compromise.
Cost effectiveness, environmental performance--the level and
types of environmental gains delivered by the program--and the
distribution of program benefits can vary widely according to the
package of decisions ultimately made about eligibility,
participation incentives, and enrollment screening.