Via the National Wildlife Federation.

At close to midnight last night, the House Agriculture Committee voted 36-10 to approve the farm bill. Unfortunately, the bill they passed out of committee lacked key conservation provisions that are priorities of National Wildlife Federation. Unlike the Senate version of the farm bill, this House version does not tie soil and wetland protection provisions, known as conservation compliance, to eligibility for crop insurance premium subsidies. Additionally, it contains only a weak regional Sodsaver provision to protect native prairies that applies to only parts of 5 states in the Northern Great Plains. Finally, we were particularly disappointed that an attempt from Rep. Ann Kuster (D-NH) to increase funding for practices that benefit wildlife on working lands met opposition from both the Chair and Ranking Member of the committee and the amendment had to be withdrawn.

The next step for the Farm Bill is that the full Senate will take it up for consideration next week, starting Monday, and the House will hopefully bring it to the floor sometime in June. We will continue working to ensure that the final Farm Bill includes a link between conservation compliance and crop insurance subsidies, a strong national Sodsaver provision, and adequate funding for programs that benefit wildlife.

Below is a rundown of how the amendments that NWF weighed in on fared during last night’s debate. As you will see, most of the amendments we supported were withdrawn, and two of the amendments we opposed were approved.

• Nolan # 58 (FAILED BY VOICE VOTE) to raise the maximum enrollment of CSP from 8,695,000 acres to 10,348,000 acres.  This would reduce the funding cut to the Conservation Stewardship Program, which is a critically important tool to help farmers improve both the environmental and long term economic performance of their land by protecting soil, water and related resources.

• Garamendi #86 (NOT OFFERED) to allow interested states to permit qualified third parties to hold and manage easements under the Forest Legacy Program.  The amendment would allow the states to terminate the third party holding of the easement if it is not managed appropriately.  Third party holding of easements is allowed in many other conservation programs.

• King #73 (APPROVED) would prioritize one interest in the Missouri River basin over all other authorized purposes and require additional costly and damaging manipulation of the Missouri River channel.  The Army Corps of Engineers has already released a study finding that adding more flood storage to the Missouri River reservoirs would not have prevented the floods of 2011.  Improvements to managing the Missouri River should be addressed as part of the already authorized Army Corps study reassessing the authorized project purposes of the Missouri River system and through restoring the river’s natural flood protection capacity.