AUDIO: Brien Fulton (3 min. MP3)

AUDIO: Craig Eppling (3 min. MP3)

AUDIO: Ramiro Lopez (3 min. MP3)

As conservation district staff and volunteers gathered in Orlando this week, President Obama proposed sweeping budget changes, including reducing what Congress has authorized for federal conservation programs.

NACD President Steve Robinson says the organization will keep the option open of going back to Congress to try to restore the numbers, but so far, any concerns that he has stop short of sounding like complaining.

“We still are at an historic high with our conservation [budget] numbers,” Robinson told Brownfield as the NACD convention ended. “We’ve got the ability and the folks out there across the country that have the passion to do this, and we’ll get done what we need to get done.”

AUDIO: Steve Robinson (6 min. MP3)

One example of concern for Robinson is the well-used Environmental Quality Incentives Progam (EQIP) funding, which, is slightly higher, but proposed to be less than Congress authorized for 2011.

“I use it on my farm, it’s a very versatile program, it covers a lot of different things,” said Robinson about EQIP, “so I think that would be one that we want to pay close attention to and make sure we protect that because that’s a really good program that we use.”

AUDIO: Jeff Eisenberg, NACD, CEO (5:00 MP3)

AUDIO: Tom Porta, Pres. ASIWPCA (3:15 MP3)

AUDIO: Jeff Lape, Chesapeake Bay Program Director (5:00 MP3)

AUDIO: Dave White, NRCS Chief (5:30 MP3)

“It’s a mixed bag,” Lewandrowski told Brownfield after addressing the National Association of Conservation Districts convention in Orlando Monday. It’s a mixed bag because, he says, the northern and eastern parts of the U.S. are in for longer growing seasons and adequate precipitation. However, he feels being part of climate change mitigation is the thing to do.

“[Mitigating climate change] stands to have a net positive impact on much of agriculture and, on balance, I think agriculture can help form the bridge to that future,” he said.

AUDIO: Jan Lewandrowski (8 min. MP3)

Although he believes something should be done about it, Lewandrowski concedes that not everyone is in the same camp about climate change.

“What we as a society and we as a global community are doing, I believe, is changing the earth’s climate, and ultimately there are a lot of very, very negative aspects of that, in my opinion,” said Lewandrowski. “Those who don’t share that opinion, I respect and they have to come to their own conclusion.”

At the same time that President Obama was proposing his budget, USDA Undersecretary Harris Sherman was telling the National Association of Conservation Districts annual convention that many federal programs will have to live with frozen or lower budgets.

NACD Secretary Treasurer Jack Majeres, a land owner from Dell Rapids, South Dakota, hopes that increased conservation funding of the 2008 Farm Bill will stand, but regardless of that, he says conservation districts have help.

“We have many partners out there across the country, other farm organizations, wildlife groups, what have you, that are partnering together with us to make sure that those dollars are continuing to flow to conserve our natural resources,” Majeres told Brownfield in an interview during a break in the convention.

AUDIO: Jack Majeres (5 min. MP3)

Later Monday, however, as more details of the budget emerged, it was learned that the President proposes to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from conservation programs provided in the 2008 Farm Bill. While funding for many conservation programs is higher than it was last year, President Obama’s proposed budget includes cuts in what Congress authorized for conservation this year, according to Natural Resources Conservation Service Chief  Dave White, who spoke Tuesday at the NACD convention. 

Regardless, the proposed cuts in authorization are drawing criticism from the group American Farmland Trust.

“The fact of the matter is, slashing these programs will do nothing significant to address our nation’s budget problems while it will dramatically reduce our ability to protect the resources,” says Jon Scholl, American Farmland Trust (AFT) President, in a news release. “We’re concerned that it is penny-wise now, and will be very pound foolish in the future.”

In the news release, Scholl pointed out that the proposal represents nearly a 20% cut to working-lands conservation programs, “yet agriculture is the most cost-effective solution to these very real environmental challenges,” he said.

Some of the key cuts concerning AFT include the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program. The FRPP is a cost-share program that helps farmers keep their land in agriculture in perpetuity and is slated for $55 million in cuts over the next two years.

Another cut in funds authorized by Congress is proposed for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). Those funds help landowners install buffer strips between fields and streams and fence livestock out of waterways. The authorization is slated to be reduced by $380 million, or by 31% in 2011, although according to NRCS Chief White, actual funding for EQIP is slightly higher than a year ago.

The Conservation Security Program (CSP) is to be cut by hundreds of millions of dollars, depending on the final reimbursement rate per acre used, according to the AFT news release. CSP provides cost-share monies to farmers to assist in implementing on-farm stewardship practices on working farm and ranchland.