The U.S. Must Put More Land Into Production

For the past many years now farmers have been putting their land into the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The original intentions of the program were to encourage farmers to take their poorest producing land and give it back to nature. Simply put the government pays farms to plant grass sometimes trees.

But over the years more and more productive land was placed into the program, as with the depress prices over a twenty year span made farming, but for the biggest farms uneconomical. As this writer comes from a farming family I know that at the time my family put its land reluctantly into CRP, the price was hovering at about $3.00 a bushel, the cost to raise the crop higher than what we got for it. Now our land wasn't the best, it could be considered average, still worth farming if the price for grain was reasonable. It is not until these last couple years with sky rocketing prices that farming has once again turn profitable.

So the CRP turned into a welfare system for farmers who would otherwise go belly up and lose everything. For those farms that put all of their land in CRP, it offered stability and a way to survive. The program also indirectly helped farmers that stayed with farming, by reducing surplus so helping increase the grain prices gradually.

Now things have changed quite a bit from those grim days for farmers. Prices have turned a full 180, now no longer too low but two high. People around the world are increasingly going hungry. Even here in the US and other wealthy nations the average consumer has felt the pinch of higher prices, just one more thing to fuel recession.

The answer is simple we must grow more food. For the developing world this means largely investing in more efficient agriculture to produce higher crop yields. For the US where agricultural methods are well developed to produce high yields, former farmland must be placed back into production.

Seems simple, but the main hurdle for US farmers is the CRP program, the same program that has helped many farmers. Two main problems, first the program imposes stiff penalties on any farmer trying to opt out early not only must the farmer pay back every dime but also interest and other penalties, which for most makes opting out and economic impossibility especially if one is well into their contract. Second for those who put their whole farm into CRP, most of the farm equipment often or not has been sold. So any farmer interested in restarting must buy all new equipment or lease the land out that is if he can find another farmer willing to. Equipment is not cheap and with current credit crisis getting a loan would likely be challenging.

The solutions to these problems are easy enough to solve, but they will require and act of Congress. Two things must be done, by Congress. First the rules must be changed so that farmers can opt out without crushing payback and penalties, no payback and penalties at all would be best. Second low interest government loans for first year startup cost, somewhere in the amount of 100,000 dollars per thousand acres with a limit of 400,000 dollars, this would cover well the startup cost needs of small to mid size farms.

The benefits of such congressional action would be wide spread both nationally and world wide. Taxpayers would well benefit from a reduction of CRP program cost and loans paid back with interest, as well as a lower food bill. World wide increased amount of food would lower prices to reasonable levels, hence breeding stability.

The outlook of no or insufficient action would bold ill for the nation and especially the world. Nationally high food prices would be just one more thing continuing to weigh us down. For the world much more grim in third world and developing nations, food shortages will led to famine, famine to death and instability. There are few things more horrible than starving.

The intentions of this article are not to advocate ending the CRP program, but to help provide solutions to the world wide food shortage. By encouraging voters to encourage their congressmen to enact legislation that would encourage and help farmers to place productive land back into production, for the good of the nation and world. This must be acted on soon, as it takes time to put land back into production. The seeds sown this year won't be harvest until next year. I encourage all who read this article to contact their respective congressmen either by email or phone. Do it today as Congress even now works on the farm bill. Act today to make a difference for tomorrow.