Open up CRP?

CRP land on my family farm in Nebraska

Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley recently proposed opening up the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) as a way to replace some of the cropland capacity lost from flooding in Iowa and elsewhere in the Midwest. A good idea? Not, say the majority of farmers taking an Agriculture Online poll.

In comments to the poll, you'll find a diverse set of opinions. Said one farmer: "There will be little benefit to crop production this year by opening it up so it wouldn't serve much purpose." Others are opposed for another reason: "All that land is HEL [highly erodible land] and probably needs to stay in CRP."

In a news story this week, Agriculture Online reported that Ag Secretary Ed Schafer is mulling over a decision on what to do with CRP land in the 2009 crop year. One hopes that he will carefully consider the long-term impacts of such a decision, and realize that people out on the land may see this differently than Washington politicians, including Grassley. The CRP certainly is not the answer to all of our soil and water conservation problems, and it is not the answer to what ails us now on cropland.

Answer is blowin' in the wind

Grain bins, and former grain bins, Buffalo County, NE

We had just spent a week on the road, starting from Des Moines, Iowa, zig-zagging across western Iowa, northwest Missouri, half of Nebraska, northern Kansas and back home again--a route like a lariat trying to catch the wind. The Crop Tech Tour is a free-wheeling, season-long look at how newer production technologies are performing in-season, and in real time, so to speak.

We saw farmers using an array of practices--plant genetics, precision ag, energy and labor savings inventions, and so on. The inventiveness of the American farmer is a boundless topic, one that deserves a year-round tour bus, with a tag-team of journalists. On this trip, it was just my brother and me, wielding video and photo equipment, hoping to capture some bits of what it's like to be farming in this challenging year.

The weather trumped the technology last week. At just about every farm where we stopped, somebody had a story about the tough conditions this spring--hail, high winds, heavy rains, flooding, you name it. Despite all the planning, equipment, and skill used by farmers, it is the weather that has the last word. We all know that. But, every spring is a reminder.

By Kearney, Nebraska, we had endured several big storms and seen pivot irrigation units and grain bins twisted up and pitched across fields like discarded farm toys. Our rental car was pock-marked by hail.

But the worst was yet to come.

On Thursday, we stopped at a Kansas farm that had just been destroyed by a tornado. There, Maureen Pfizenmaier described to us in a video interview how she felt seeing her farm in shambles. All of a sudden, through her amazing composure, it was as if we were seeing through to some larger truth. Some days, we can simply only witness the larger forces at work on the land.

A few hours later, in Manhattan, Kansas, the tour about finished, I walked into a public facility and heard the old Bob Dylan song playing over the PA system--"The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind...."

Indeed that's the theme for the Crop Tech Tour so far this year, at least from my worm's eye view of it. Blowin' in the wind.