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Grassland Concerns Detailed

By Kelly Bostian

September 20, 2008

FREDERICK — Worry about conservation measures that can't keep pace with rising commodity prices headlined the presentation that conservationists brought to the annual Ducks Unlimited Oklahoma/Kansas Outdoor Media Camp last week at Frederick.

But farmers in this region might have a different view of the issues.

With crop prices and the need for grains rising and a 2008 Farm Bill perceived as a weakened measure, DU is increasing efforts on the prairie pothole region and the grasslands there.

"Right now, that region is Priority 1," said David Schuessler, director of event and volunteer promotion for Ducks Unlimited.

Schuessler spoke at a two-day camp in Frederick, home of the Hackberry Flat Wildlife Management Area.

Presenters set a tone of concern backed with statistics that show waterfowl populations at high levels. They also spelled out ambitious plans that the state and the national nonprofit have to expand Oklahoma's public lands offerings as rest and refueling stops for migratory birds in North America's Central Flyway.

Schuessler also shotgunned his way through a synopsis of the nation's 2008 Farm Bill.

Incentives for farmers to produce crops to feed the world and energize it with ethanol, a 7.8 million acre reduction in lands proposed for the Conservation Reserve Program, the inability for such federal set-aside programs to compensate farmers on par with rising crop prices, and the weakening of the so-called "Sodsaver" program topped a list of negatives. The Sodsaver provision would have made grasslands exempt from federal incentives designed to encourage crop production.

"Once you turn that soil, it's never the same again," said Schuessler, repeating a mantra that "grass plus water equals ducks."

The bill, as passed, kept the Sodsaver provision in only a few states in the pothole region. State governors would have to choose to participate. "No governor is individually going to opt into that," Schuessler said.

Indeed, the office of an Oklahoma congressman representing much of rural Oklahoma, Rep. Frank Lucas of Cheyenne, reports that local constituents opposed Sodsaver and that is why Oklahoma is not an option for the program.

Lucas' press secretary, Leslie Shedd, added that CRP is a voluntary program, while Sodsaver could have forced farmers who own grassland into a disadvantage compared to their neighbors. Shedd also pointed out that the perceived CRP allocation reduction simply changed to reflect the amount of acreage in the voluntary program. Dollars associated with that potential allocation were uses in other parts of the farm bill, she said.

Lucas, who is ranking member of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Conservation, Credit, Energy and Research, said the farmer participation in set-aside programs naturally will ebb and flow.

"CRP is one of the most successful conservation programs in the history of federal farm policy," he said.

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