# House Passes 2014 Farm Bill....



## gdog (Sep 13, 2007)

House passed 2014 Farm Bill and now to the Senate.

"The new Farm Bill significantly reduces Conservation Reserve Program acreage. The cap on CRP acres drops to 24 million by 2018, 8 million fewer acres than the cap in the 2008 Farm Bill. Currently, 25.6 million acres are enrolled in CRP, with 2 million acres are set to expire this year. An incentive-based program, CRP pays farmers to idle marginal land and plant cover grasses." Deltawaterfowl - Delta News Tyler Shoberg, Associate Editor on 01/29/2014

Last 2 years we've seen significant amounts of CRP land plowed under. This past fall we lost 3 of our best Sharptail/Hun areas. Can't blame them, but ****....


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

Better than the way it looked 9 months ago. Losing 2 million acres on the cap is not good though, depends on grain prices more than anything.

When corn was $7/bushel no one used CRP. They plowed up all the ground they could back in the pheasant belt. Corn is around $4.50 now and the crystal ball says prices may be the same next fall. It takes $4.25 to produce a bushel of corn, so $4.50/bushel doesn't leave any margin, they might as well go with some CRP. Beans are good, I think, and many will may switch from corn to beans if they can get the seed. 

Up and down it goes. In today's economy grain prices ebb and flow with oil prices. If crude oil prices spike corn, think ethanol gasoline, prices will follow. 

The real loser is the land. The CRP program is (was?) about erosion, the continued loss of top soil from the ground being laid bare, especially after fall plowing. Today there's hardly any fall plowing. Now they let the weeds pop up and then spray them with chemicals. The weeds and their roots provide a little cover for the bare ground and reduce erosion a little. But all the herbicides are hammering the big rivers and the Gulf of Mexico. And then there's insecticides. In the old days the quail and pheasants could make a living in grain fields and hay fields; not any more, too many insecticides on a grain operation. (different if grain is raised on a bird farm) 

We'll see how it goes. I'm glad I was around the Midwest during the glory days for bird hunting during the 60s and 70s.


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## Bret (Sep 7, 2007)

Its a tough situation for sure. However, I'm glad they passed something like Goob said it was looking much worse.


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## gdog (Sep 13, 2007)

Goob...fall plowing...again limited time afield chasing birds unfortunately (**** big game tags) this past fall, but we came across large tracks of ground turned over to dirt. Once weed/crp, now nothing but dirt from pavement to mountain. Not sure if they had planted winter wheat or what(?), but it was definitely a big hit to winter coverage.

We were parked at a walk-in area taking a break and bs'ing when the farmer pulled up to chat. Got onto the crp subject and he just shook his head. One comment he made, was that they had to turn over the crp periodically (not sure how often) and replant. Said that the state was making them replant with native grasses, which in his opinion would not support the game birds, like their current/past plantings do and thought it to be a bad decision in regards to sustaining game bird populations....that he felt like they had supported for so many years(?)


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## utahgolf (Sep 8, 2007)

I love how the original bill had a provision that made congressional members have to disclose the benefits they personally receive from farm subsidies. But when they compromised on the the final bill, they took out that provision. So members of congress don't have to disclose what they receive. I'd be willing to bet, some of these same congressional members talk about government being too big and taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize the poor or certain programs. I'm guessing that's why they don't want the information disclosed. Pretty interesting.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

gdog said:


> Goob...fall plowing...again limited time afield chasing birds unfortunately (**** big game tags) this past fall, but we came across large tracks of ground turned over to dirt. Once weed/crp, now nothing but dirt from pavement to mountain. Not sure if they had planted winter wheat or what(?), but it was definitely a big hit to winter coverage.
> 
> We were parked at a walk-in area taking a break and bs'ing when the farmer pulled up to chat. Got onto the crp subject and he just shook his head. One comment he made, was that they had to turn over the crp periodically (not sure how often) and replant. Said that the state was making them replant with native grasses, which in his opinion would not support the game birds, like their current/past plantings do and thought it to be a bad decision in regards to sustaining game bird populations....that he felt like they had supported for so many years(?)


Was the ground just plowed? plowed and disked? I don't know much about dry farming. If the ground is all lumpy its just plowed and they're trying to get a jump on the spring planting season. It will dry out faster. In wet country fall plowing left the ground unprotected from heavy rains or quick thaws that washed the topsoil away. After 150 years of fall plowing the topsoil in the pheasant belt was dissappearing.

I never heard of having to plant CRP with native grasses on the layover years. But I don't follow CRP too close anymore. I do know that some politicians continually try to dissolve the program; "it's socialism". They never seem to get the job done on a Federal level but anti-government state politicians legislate laws to make the program less successful; IMO at the expense of sportsmean.

I believe CRP was on a 5-year rotation; so many years producing a crop (proving that the ground was farmable) and then so many years laying the same ground aside, letting it grow up in weeds. There was(is) a lot of paperwork, red tape and record-keeping to CRP. Maybe one of our members can chime in here. Like I said before during the late 70s and early 80s when crop prices were sky-high they plowed everything up in the Midwest, raped the land. Some of it will was not made for corn or soybeans and will take thousands of years to recover from the plowing.

When they first started CRP a lot of big cross-country pipelines were being built across America. A trick was to not plant any crops on the new pipeline right-of-way and then turn that in as CRP. Then they would turn in crop damages to the pipeline company too. That practice didn't last long. There were other creative ways to make the CRP work for you too. But all in all it saved a lot of topsoil and harbored a lot of upland game.

Outside of winter wheat there isn't a lot of fall plowing anymore; North Dakota, northern South Dakota and some of Idaho being exceptions. As a matter of fact plowing has been replaced by low-till or no-till farming where they just cut the ground just deep enough to get the seeds down and then just use chemicals to keep the weeds down. Herbicide use has increased expotentially. Ultimately, IMO, those herbicides combined with all the high-powered pesticides used now will be the end of quail, partridge and pheasants in the Bird Belt.


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## GaryFish (Sep 7, 2007)

There are a variety of things that get lumped under the umbrella term "CRP." Some are just soil banking programs, that require no-plow rotation on farms, that might bank away 1/4 of total acreage to take a rest each year, on a 4 year rotation. Others under the umbrella are just reduction in plowed acreage, with no-plow on certain lands through the duration, so no maintenance of any kind is required. Others under the CRP umbrella require re-seeding, usually with USDA providing the seed, which can be a mix of native plants, the idea to restore what has been lost. Others under the CRP umbrella are wildlife habitat focused, and require planting and maintenance of seed mixes that may or may not be native, but are certainly designed for optimum wildlife habitat improvement. These are the areas that are usually associated with "walk-in" hunting programs, where the land owner gets a variety of funds, some of which come from habitat stamp kind of programs, where the land owner is paid to allow public access to the actively managed CRP lands. 
The amount of payment the farmer gets though - is dependent upon the variety of programs and level of management that is involved. And as Goob said, lots of paperwork for any and all of it. Seems like every three horse town in the midwest has a full staff of Aggies at the USDA office that do nothing but help farmers negotiate that kind of stuff.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

GaryFish said:


> There are a variety of things that get lumped under the umbrella term "CRP." Some are just soil banking programs, that require no-plow rotation on farms, that might bank away 1/4 of total acreage to take a rest each year, on a 4 year rotation. Others under the umbrella are just reduction in plowed acreage, with no-plow on certain lands through the duration, so no maintenance of any kind is required. Others under the CRP umbrella require re-seeding, usually with USDA providing the seed, which can be a mix of native plants, the idea to restore what has been lost. Others under the CRP umbrella are wildlife habitat focused, and require planting and maintenance of seed mixes that may or may not be native, but are certainly designed for optimum wildlife habitat improvement. These are the areas that are usually associated with "walk-in" hunting programs, where the land owner gets a variety of funds, some of which come from habitat stamp kind of programs, where the land owner is paid to allow public access to the actively managed CRP lands.
> The amount of payment the farmer gets though - is dependent upon the variety of programs and level of management that is involved. And as Goob said, lots of paperwork for any and all of it. Seems like every three horse town in the midwest has a full staff of Aggies at the USDA office that do nothing but help farmers negotiate that kind of stuff.


Thanks *GaryFish.*

My uncle retired from farming and worked for the USDA part time. One of his jobs was to get with landowners and measure CRP plots, do the paperwork. I think it's the honor system now; budget cuts.

If you fly accross the Midwest you'll notice green, or brown, depending on the time of year, strips of land in the crops or in the plowed fields. Those are waterways planted with grass, usually brome or a rye. Many farmers seed grasses in the low places that wash away during heavy rains. Much of that is CRP, some of which is an argument because the farmer may bale hay off of it. Some of the waterways don't see a lot of herbicides or pesticides and provide great cover for upland game. Much to the dismay of bird hunters some farmers mow all their waterways just because....strange, costs a ton of money and time.

.


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## wyogoob (Sep 7, 2007)

*GaryFish, *

Do they still have the PIK (Payment in Kind) program? That's what we called the CRP plots; "PIK farming" I don't hear that acronym in these parts.


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## coolgunnings (Sep 8, 2007)

Nobody farms where I hunted in Idaho last year. Did well on birds.


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