Vilsack rejects calls to till conservation land to help avert global food shortage, says the land won't produce - Entrepreneur Generations

The United States and allies have pledged to plant more crops this spring to avert a global food shortage from the war in Ukraine. But Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack "poured cold water on Republican and industry calls to pull land out of the Conservation Reserve Program and put it back into production," Ximena Bustillo reports for Politico's Weekly Agriculture.

Vilsack wrote in a March 31 letter to the National Grain and Feed Association: "Quickly converting this land to crop production is clearly unfeasible, even if we were to overlook the negative consequences of increased erosion and reduced water quality, wildlife habitat reduction, and decreased carbon sequestration and storage."

The conservation program pays farmers a yearly rate to allow "environmentally sensitive" cropland to go fallow for at least a decade and try to improve its health. "They can receive higher payments by adopting certain climate-friendly practices that improve water quality, increase carbon sequestration or protect wildlife habitats," Bustillo reports.

Vilsack noted in the letter that only 1.3 percent of farmland enrolled in CRP is considered high-quality and ready for planting. Also, he wrote, much of the land in the program is experiencing "significant levels of drought" and most of it is grassland or far better suited to grazing than crop production. So not only would it be impossible to get all that cropland ready to plant this year, but most of it would produce poorly. And in the meantime, tilling that land would create a "significant and detrimental impact on producers’ efforts to mitigate climate change and maintain the long-term health of their land."

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/pL4jxUk Vilsack rejects calls to till conservation land to help avert global food shortage, says the land won't produce - Entrepreneur Generations

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