Farm Bill conservation programs provide critical help to Ohio farmers and protect our natural resources, yet today these important programs are at risk.
In 2022, Ohio farmers received nearly $37 million through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), two Farm Bill programs that help farmers pay a portion of the cost of installing new conservation practices and systems. The funds helped farmers plant cover crops, adopt nutrient management plans, diversify their crop rotations, manage brush in pastures, and take other conservation initiatives on 192,000 acres of Ohio farmland.
Impressive accomplishments, yet that year nearly two-thirds of the Ohio farmers who applied for help through those two U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs were turned down because of a lack of funding.
Congress responded, wisely adding funds to USDA farm conservation programs in 2022. That provided an additional $5 million for Ohio farmers in 2023 and $35 million more in 2024.
Because of that added funding, more than 240 square miles of Ohio farmland now have conservation systems in place that better protect our drinking water, reduce soil erosion, provide habitat for wildlife, and store carbon in the soil. More than half of Ohio’s land area is farmland, and what happens on those acres has an out-sized impact on our wetlands, wildlife, rivers, and lakes, including Lake Erie.
A study from the Alliance for the Great Lakes showed the financial impact on communities that rely on Lake Erie for drinking water: a family of five in Toledo is paying roughly $100 a year more in their water bill because of the harmful algal blooms caused by agricultural runoff. USDA conservation programs help farmers adopt measures that reduce polluted runoff.
Farmers see financial benefits as well. Their farms are now more resilient to changing weather patterns because their soils are healthier, and they can often reduce the cost of inputs like fertilizer and pesticides. Even with increased program dollars available, growing demand from farmers continues to far out-strip the conservation funds available.
Congress has a one-time opportunity to build on these results in Ohio and other states by folding the remaining one-time funds into long-term conservation funding when it writes a new Farm Bill. But that might not happen if Congress continues to delay writing a new Farm Bill until after all the one-time funds are spent.
The recent firings and layoffs of USDA conservation employees are an additional burden to delivering farm conservation programs. USDA employees working in rural Ohio help farmers understand cutting edge conservation systems, develop plans to implement them, and apply for financial help when needed.
USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) was already short-handed, finding it difficult to hire qualified conservation staff when federal starting pay is less than can be earned in the private sector. From press reports, more than 10 percent of NRCS employees have already been released or taken a ‘voluntary buyout’, and USDA could soon cut 30% of its staff – All that at a time when the agency’s workload is higher than ever.
The federal cuts, on top of significant cuts to Governor DeWine’s H2Ohio by the Ohio legislature, our state’s flagship water quality program, present an enormous challenge to conservation. Taken together they diminish efforts to clean up the Ohio River and Lake Erie and reduce the risk of harmful algal blooms that foul our drinking water supplies and harm the recreation industry.
Farmers, and Ohio’s natural resources, deserve better.
Ohioans expect their drinking water to be clean, their lakes to support fish, their rivers to be safe to canoe, and their wetlands to recharge groundwater and filter out pollution. Farm Bill conservation programs, and the NRCS staff who work daily with Ohio producers, help farmers do their part to make that happen.
