Columbia, Mo. (AP) — A federal conservation program originally designed to help small farmers is now disproportionately benefiting industrial livestock operations, according to a new report by a family farm advocacy group.

The Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment examined five years worth of payments through the federal Environmental Quality Incentives Program, known as EQIP.

Nationally, industrial hog operations accounted for 37 percent of all EQIP payments, the group determined, even though such businesses account for less than 11 percent of that industry. Industrial dairies received 54 percent of all EQIP dairy contracts. Such businesses represent only 3.9 percent of all dairy operations.

The study found similar disparities on the state level in Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri.

“This report demonstrates what family farmers have known for years: This corporate-controlled, industrial model of livestock production can’t survive without taxpayer support,” said Rhonda Perry, a Howard County livestock farmer and program director of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center.

But Don Nikodim, executive vice president of the Missouri Pork Association, said the program is working as Congress intended. Even with the family farm group’s estimate that industrial operations are receiving $35 million annually, that still leaves plenty of the $6.1 billion set aside six years ago for other producers.

“It’s available to all sizes of producers,” Nikodim said. “Small farms can use it just like large farms.”

Because of their larger size, industrial operations often own more land and so need more money, he said.

When Congress created the conservation program in the 1996 Farm Bill, grants were limited to $50,000 over five years and waste storage facilities were excluded from eligibility. Participants are required to match the federal payments.

Six years later, lawmakers expanded EQIP to include industrial farms. The maximum payment level was increased to $450,000, with 60 percent of allocations set aside for livestock farmers.

The head of the federal agency that administers EQIP noted that Congress intended the program to be “size neutral.”

Contracts issued this year averaged $31,235, with more than 82 percent of payments since 2002 falling under $25,000, said Arlen Lancaster, chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Full story: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/01/01/national/a043556S85.DTL