Growing a greener future? USDA and natural resource conservation.

• Author: Waanders, Jason

1. INTRODUCTION

   There shall be at the seat of Government a Department of Agriculture, the general designs and duties of which shall be to acquire and to diffuse among the people of the United States useful information on subjects connected with agriculture, rural development, aquaculture, and human nutrition, in the most general and comprehensive sense of those terms, and to procure, propagate, and distribute among the people new and valuable seeds and plants.(1) In 1862, President Lincoln signed the Act to Establish a Department of Agriculture (1862 Act).(2) With the country in the throes of the Civil War, the event was perhaps barely noticed at the time. But even the largest trees grow from tiny seeds.

   The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA or Department) grew slowly at first, remaining fairly close to its roots for over seventy years. During this period, USDA was primarily a research and information agency, as was clearly contemplated in the 1862 Act. USDA gained full Cabinet status in 1889(3) and grew over the next few decades by expanding the scope of its research and by forming new agencies.(4) The most notable of these new agencies was the Bureau of Forestry, added in 1901 and renamed the United States Forest Service (USFS) in 1905.(5) USFS gained jurisdiction over the forest reserves of the Department of Interior in 1905 through the efforts of its first Chief, Gifford Pinchot.(6)

   USDA oversight has always been a very informal affair. The Department spent its early years as a research organization made up of teams that focused upon various disciplines.(7) Constituent agencies like the Forest Service were largely independent, there being little reason for centralized oversight. For USFS and most other USDA agencies, independence has been the rule up to the present day.

   The 1930s were a time of tremendous change for USDA. In that period, Congress called upon the Department to take a prominent new role as part of the expanding administrative state.(8) Though it retained its former mandate, it also grew enormously in size and importance, and its primary purpose shifted from research to service and action.(9) With a series of statutes, culminating in the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938,(10) Congress made USDA responsible for the very livelihood of the nation's farmers.(11) By this point, government officials were calling USDA "a new Department."(12) USDA's farm agencies, through their administration of the 1938 Act and its successors, have shaped American agriculture into what it is today.

   USDA's growth has been a mixed blessing. Agricultural productivity has been the highest in history, and farm incomes have been stable. But the price has been a shift toward ever higher reliance upon chemical inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, with corresponding severe damage to soil fertility, water quality, and other environmental amenities.(13) The farm agencies' tremendous control over the practice of agriculture has effectively made them natural resource agencies. But for most of the last sixty years they largely have been unable to admit that fact or take effective steps toward conserving the natural resources within their regulatory power. Instead, the farm agencies' programs have often caused the private owners of agricultural land to use resources in an unsustainable and damaging manner. USDA's few conservation mandates have been rendered largely ineffective by their fundamental conflicts with its farm programs.

   Meanwhile, there has been little doubt that the Forest Service is a natural resource agency.(14) USFS differs from the farm agencies in that its programs and policies concern natural resources on public land--within the national forests. Its long-standing placement within USDA (despite outside efforts to shift the agency to the Department of the Interior, which administers most other public lands) has traditionally been justified by a belief that trees in the national forests are "crops" to be grown and harvested.(15) This position has prevented USFS, much like the farm agencies, from effectively conserving the natural resources within its power.(16)

   The first half of this Comment discusses some of the ways that flawed legal mandates and organizational problems have kept USDA from effectively implementing science-based conservation in exercising its control over natural resources. Part II discusses the farm agencies and Part III discusses the Forest Service; each of these Parts will outline the major legal mandates and organizational issues, as well as resulting environmental problems.

   The second half of this Comment discusses recent changes in USDA: changes that could prove to be the most significant the Department has undergone since the 1930s. These recent events provide reason to believe that USDA is moving toward a position of greater responsibility for conserving the natural resources under its care. Part IV discusses the Reorganization Act of 1994 (and related issues) and Part V discusses the 1996 Farm Bill and its potential impacts. This Comment concludes, in Part VI, with a discussion of whether a coordinated natural resource and conservation policy can and should ultimately be adopted within USDA.

2. USDA FARM PROGRAMS--"HIGHLY INTENSIVE CROPPING AND INPUT USE"

   1. Basic Elements of USDA's Farm Programs and Their Effects on Natural Resources

      While a detailed analysis of USDA's farm programs would require an entire book, it is necessary here to give a brief introduction to the basic elements of some of those programs and their effects on natural resources.(17) USDA conducts a wide variety of farm programs that are administered by numerous agencies within the Department. Major programs include price supports, crop insurance, agricultural research, food safety inspections, and marketing programs.(18)

      The purpose of commodity programs is to stabilize farmers' incomes and thereby protect them from the effects of large shifts in crop prices. The commodity programs thus operate in tandem with federal crop insurance programs, which protect farmers from losses due to crop failures. In other words, crop insurance protects farmers against the vagaries of nature, while commodity programs protect them from the vagaries of the market. The commodity programs have focused upon just a few crops, the most important being wheat, corn, rice, and cotton.(19) The basic assumption of the programs is that if these market-dominating "commodity" crops are properly managed, the markets for the rest of the country's crops will follow.(20)

      Under a commodity program, the federal government effectively agrees to buy a participating farmer's products (crops) at an arranged price if the farmer is unable to sell those products on the market.(21) The program actually operates in the guise of a loan: the farmer agrees to keep his products off the market for a certain period in exchange for a nonrecourse loan. The amount of the loan is equal to the value of the products at a congressionally determined price, and the products are held as collateral for the loan. The farmer has the opportunity to try to sell the crops at a price higher than the loan value, but if he falls he can simply default on the loan and forfeit his products. Because there is no penalty for such a default, it is really just a sale to the government.(22) There is no incentive to sell at a lower price because all farmers can receive the loan rate. Prices are further stabilized because crop sales are spread throughout loan periods rather than concentrated around harvest times.(23)

      Not all farmers participate in commodity programs. However, all farmers benefit from them--because the government buys so much of the commodities at prearranged prices, market prices for participants and nonparticipants alike rise to those prearranged levels.(24) Moreover, often Congress has explicitly set "target prices" for the commodity crops, with deficiency payments from the government available for farmers when market prices fall below the target levels.(25)

      The final key elements of the commodity programs are the acreage reduction provisions. Perhaps the most notorious aspect of the programs, these provisions enable farmers to be paid for not growing crops. Quite simply, they are a means of controlling the supply of commodity crops. Under a commodity program, the government has to buy any unwanted surplus that is produced.(26) So, it makes sense to simply pay the farmer not to produce that surplus, rather than buy it and throw it away. Such payments are made by acreage--a farmer is paid for leaving a certain portion of his land unplanted. In theory this is also good for the soil, because the soil in the fallow land might have a chance to recover.(27)

      But in reality, acreage reduction, and commodity programs as a whole, have had very serious impacts upon soil and other natural resources. By raising crop prices and simultaneously restricting the acreage that farmers can plant, these policies "encourage intensive cropping and input use on the land that is planted."(28) Continuous participation in a particular program often leads to increased payments to the farmer.(29) As a result, the programs essentially penalize farmers for switching crops.

      Commodity programs, therefore, tend to encourage farmers to grow one crop as intensely as possible. Highly intensive farming requires heavy use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers in order to maximize yields per acre. Meanwhile, continuous growth of a single crop seriously depletes the fertility of the soil. The result is a vicious cycle of dependence upon excessive use of chemical inputs. This is compounded by the loss of long-term soil fertility because chemical fertilizers can only provide short-term improvements.(30) Heavy chemical use also leads to contaminated runoff that creates water pollution, disruption of wetland and riparian ecosystems, and other forms of damage to natural resources and the...