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NCGA Testimony Details Producers’ Concerns on Farm Bill’s Conservation
Programs
May
24, 2001
FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
Contact:
David Uchic, uchic@dc.ncga.com;
202/628-7001
Gary
Bradley, NCGA Strategic Marketing Communications Manager, 636-733-9004, ext.
139
WASHINGTON (May 24, 2001) -- The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA)
yesterday called for the reauthorization of the next farm bill’s
conservation title during testimony before the House Subcommittee on
Conservation, Credit, Rural Development and Research.
Bill Horan, an NCGA
Corn Board member and a farmer from Rockwell City, Iowa, voiced commodity
groups’ support for “voluntary, incentive-based conservation
programs that past farm bills have created.”
Horan’s testimony
represented the views of a coalition of producers’ groups composed
of NCGA, the American Soybean Association, the National Association
of Wheat Growers, the National Cotton Council and the National Barley
Growers Association.
In his testimony,
Horan told the committee:
- Conservation
programs must be voluntary, incentive-based and support working land
as opposed to the inefficient land-idling programs of the past.
- Farmers have
made good progress by way of the environment in the previous farm
bills and now is the time for a new generation of conservation policy.
- There is an
urgent need for additional funding for voluntary, incentive-based
conservation spending in the next farm bill.
He concluded: “We
share the conservation goals outlined in this statement and the belief
that the conservation title should work in conjunction with a fully
funded commodity title. . . . USDA technical assistance, local watershed
activities and cost-share programs are a proven approach to addressing
environmental challenges. We support continuing this conservation commitment
to help undertake conservation practices on productive farmland through
the reauthorization of the conservation title of the next Farm Bill.”
For Horan’s
full testimony visit the NCGA web site at: www.ncga.com.
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