Congress must empower Iowa farmers to feed nation, steward planet | The Moline Dispatch & Rock Island Argus
Congress must empower Iowa farmers to feed nation, steward planet
By Rep. Austin Harris and Morgan Brummund
The Midwest is home to “Heartland” states that are critical to putting food on the tables of Americans, and the Hawkeye state is certainly no exception. Farming is a fundamental part of life in Iowa, and the state’s fertile land and favorable climate have allowed its agriculture sector to prosper and, as a result, benefit Iowa’s economy and play a critical role in feeding the nation.
As of 2022, there were more than 84,000 Iowa farming businesses operating across more than 30 million acres, which accounts for more than 90% of the state. According to a report from the same year, nearly 800,000 Iowa jobs can be attributed to the food and agriculture sector, and the industry is also responsible for $96.5 billion of direct economic output in the state. While it is home to less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, Iowa produces nearly 10% of the nation’s food supply and is the largest producer of corn, pork, and eggs.
Iowa not only leads in agriculture production, it also leads in innovation and sustainability, and Iowa farmers take pride in being good stewards of their land and of the environment. This includes the implementation of conservation practices such as no-till farming and cover cropping, which provide benefits like reduced soil erosion and improved soil health. These practices are not only environmentally responsible but also proven to help farmers maintain the long-term productivity of their land.
Many of these conservation practices are made possible through voluntary conservation programs offered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These voluntary programs provide financial and technical assistance to farmers who adopt or maintain conservation practices on working lands actively in production, as well as programs that provide easements to remove land from production. The most popular among both types of programs are the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, the Conservation Stewardship Program and the Conservation Reserve Program.
This funding has been well utilized by farmers nationwide, but especially by Iowans. These programs have typically had limited funding even with very high demand – EQIP and CSP received nearly 115,000 combined applications in 2021 but were only able to fund a third of the applicants, and many projects that meet the program’s requirements have been going unfunded for years. For example, less than 20% of EQIP applicants in Iowa received funding in 2022.
As a result of the high demand and proven benefits associated with the conservation programs, they received an influx of an additional $19.5 billion in 2022 to be spread out over five years to support the conservation programs that yield climate change mitigation benefits, practices we know benefit overall productivity. While some conservatives in Congress have goals to slash this funding and potentially remove any climate language from the program goals, the support and demand for these programs should be a sign to Congressional Republicans that this funding is necessary to help farmers meet both their conservation and productivity goals.
To shed more light on the deep support these programs have, polling conducted by ACC Action shows that 89% of Iowa voters understand the role farmers play in environmental stewardship and want to continue investing in the programs that enable them to do so. Iowans also don’t shy away from seeing the agriculture community as climate champions with 78% agreeing that “Iowa’s farms, ranches, and forests can be an important part of the solution to climate change by naturally removing carbon dioxide from the air.”
To put it simply, the voluntary conservation programs in the Farm Bill are both good for the planet and good for Iowans, and Congress must act to preserve their accessibility through the 2024 Farm Bill.
Read the original here.