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Back in April, it already seemed obvious: Spooked by skyrocketing prices for corn, soy, and wheat, policymakers would push to put as much land as possible in the Midwest under the plow, environmental consequences be damned.
One of the first policy levers, I figured, would involve gutting the Conservation Reserve Program. The CRP is a federal scheme that pays farmers to take ecologically fragile land out of production -- an act which benefits society but would otherwise not benefit farm owners, since idle land brings in no money.
By gutting the CRP, we get more land planted in corn and soy, and thus price relief for consumers. Or, so the logic goes. Back in April, I compared this dubious "solution" to the food crisis to the effort to drill in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve as a response to the energy crisis: i.e., no solution at all.
Well, just as Democrats are coming under increasing pressure to allow drilling in ANWR and other environmentally sensitive areas, the USDA is actively being hectored by farm-state politicians to let farmers plant land now enrolled in the CRP. And now the call to gut this vital program has gotten support, albeit quite measured and qualified, from a progressive source: The Washington Post editorial page.
Full Story: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/21/1639/54741?source=daily
