As Congress works toward a new Farm Bill, a House Ag Subcommittee talked conservation.
Lawmakers heard from five ag groups, including Tim Fink of the American Farmland Trust, who said that there is room to improve on how crop insurance interacts with conservation.
“I’ll say first and foremost, we need to make sure that the crop insurance system is not conflicting with these good farming practices. There’s been a lot of progress on that front, and there’s still probably progress to be made. I think the other aspect is that when we look at the crop insurance system, if we’re talking about creating additional incentives, it’s something that has to be actuarially sound, and the good news is, when we look at cover crop adoption, we’ve seen a lot of the research, it is reducing overall indemnity payments in the face of a lot of these extreme weather events. It’s also reducing prevent planting payments, and so whatever we can do that looks at the actuarially soundness, builds the research to make that case, and ultimately, our goal is to reward farmers for practices that are saving the public money and saving themselves money.”
Fink says that the Ag Land Easement Subprogram is crucial to preventing land loss. Without policy intervention, AFT estimates 18 million acres of farmland will be lost by 2040.
