Join Mary Pfaffko, Senior Policy Analyst for Private Lands, to learn how the Conservation Compliance is critical to protecting a variety of species and their habitats!
Video Transcript:
Through the Farm Bill the US Department of Agriculture incentivizes farmers and ranchers to conserve natural resources on their land to receive these voluntary incentives. Participants agree to have a soil conservation plan for their highly irritable soil and to not drain or fill a wetland to farm the land. Why does this matter? Picture this. It’s 200 years ago on North America’s Great Plains. It’s teeming with bison, black-footed ferret, greater sage grouse and other species found nowhere else on earth. Fast forward to today, only a fraction of those grasslands remains piled up and fragmented by crops and pastures, with agricultural runoff and pollution. The Farm Bill helps stop this history from repeating itself. These provisions also have fun names like Sodbuster and Swampbuster. Sodbuster discourages the plowing up of erosion prone grasslands like those in the Great Plains. While Swampbuster helps ensure that participants aren’t converting wetlands like the prairie potholes in the Great Plains to agricultural uses. These conservation compliance provisions ensure that our federal dollars support those farmers and ranchers who are working hard to improve water quality, conserve wildlife and preserve wetland functions, all while producing our nation’s food and fiber. Defenders of Wildlife works with Congress to ensure that the Farm Bill conservation programs provide productive and resilient working lands and address threats to wildlife habitat while ensuring equitable access to those programs.
