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Rural Affairs Center: EQIP funding should remain

Senate and House Appropriations ag committees have approved cuts of more than $300-Million dollars to the conservation EQIP program.

Johnathan Hladik, policy director for the Center for Rural Affairs, tells Brownfield Ag News the program has helped farmers get more than one-and-a-half million acres planted with cover crops and this is very poor timing to cut EQIP funding, “The research and experience has proven that cover crops can be a big help as farmers look for different ways to hedge against more unpredictable climactic events, for example. It’s the tool that can help you retain soil moisture. It’s a tool can really help us with water quality.”

Hladick says conservation is getting mixed messages from Congress. Senate appropriators have left funding for the Conservation Stewardship program intact, “Sort of as if the rug is being pulled out from under us. You get momentum on one side and then the funding for that momentum sort of disappears and that’s what we’re seeing this as.”

 

He tells Brownfield Congress should not tamper with the 2014 Farm Bill and his group will fight to keep EQIP funding in place.