BACKGROUND AND PROBLEM: The Environmental Quality Incentives Program
(EQIP) is the second largest conservation program in U.S. history.
Under the 1996 farm bill EQIP was intended to help family farmers
pay for practices that protect soil and water. The program worked
reasonably well in support of farm conservation efforts, with
a special emphasis on cost-effective land management practices.
Payments were limited to $10,000 a year, with a cap of no more
than $50,000 over five years. Animal waste storage structures
for large-scale confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) were
ineligible for EQIP funding.
During the 2002 farm bill debate, family farm groups fought to
ensure that this program remained in its original form, albeit
with increased funding, to benefit family farmers rather than
becoming a program of corporate welfare. However, Congress caved
to the political clout of the meatpacking industry and corporate-aligned
commodity groups and enabled large-scale confinement operations
to become eligible for EQIP funding. Congress eliminated the yearly
payment limit, and the overall payment limitation mushroomed nine-fold
to $450,000 over the six-year span of the farm bill. Proponents
of these changes spoke openly about converting EQIP from a conservation
program to a program that used tax dollars to clean up after industrial
livestock production.
Under current rules, EQIP is not the environmental quality program
it was intended to be; rather it is a harmful subsidy program
that will result in further CAFO expansion. Its ranking criteria
can result in environmentally-damaging technologies being favored
over sustainable methods. Public oversight of the EQIP program
is now even more difficult, due to new special exemptions of key
data from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
CHANGES SUPPORTED BY NFFC:
In 2003, Senator Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) plan to offer an
amendment to reduce the amount of money that farms could get through
the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) was blocked.
The Grassley amendment would have limited the use of EQIP to subsidize
large factory farms, while allowing for a wider, fairer distribution
of EQIP funds to a larger number of farmers. The amendment would
have redirected funding to help family farms and improve the environmental
outcomes of the EQIP program.
Senator Grassley’s proposed EQIP amendment would have been
a step in the right direction to redirect conservation funding
to help more family farmers, and limit the ability of large corporations
to use the program as another form of corporate welfare.
FUTURE ACTION STEPS COULD INCLUDE:
• Watch this space for legislation in the U.S. Congress
to limit EQIP payment caps, and otherwise mitigate the harmful
changes of the 2002 Farm Bill for EQIP.
• Each state NRCS office is charged with providing regular
opportunities for public input through State Technical Committees.
In 2003, Missouri family farm activists (including members of
the Missouri Rural Crisis Center) testified through the public
participation process, and the NRCS announced in early September
that they would revise new scoring criteria for EQIP applications
received in 2003. The new rules made it more difficult for new
or expanding CAFOs to receive EQIP funds.
Read the NFFC press release on Family Farmers
and EQIP
For more information: Corporate
Research Project's report on EQIP
