Ethanol versus pheasants

The impact of not drilling and instead using taxpayers’ money to subsidize ethanol is about to hurt pheasants:

Conservation groups are worried.

"There is no question CRP is in jeopardy of heading down the Soil Bank path if we don't address the program's economic viability given the landscape of today's agricultural market," said Dave Nomsen, Pheasants Forever/Quail Forever's vice president of government affairs.

The Soil Bank Conservation Reserve Program largely had been credited with creating the first era where wildlife flourished, Nomsen said. The program ended in 1962 and as contracts expired, millions of acres of critical wildlife habitat were plowed. Wildlife populations plummeted.

Environmental and conservation groups say the same thing will happen if farmers opt out early or simply let their CRP contracts end.

"Rules, regulations, appropriations and promotion of conservation programs are all critical to the magic of turning law into habitat on the land," Nomsen said.

In the 2008 farm bill, Congress decreased the number of acres allowed in the CRP program from 39.2 million acres to 32 million acres.

And farmers continue to take land out of the program, enticed by new global markets and federal mandates to turn more corn into ethanol.

And John Thune, who promoting the ethanol toute, now has to kiss the butts of the Tony Dean crowd:

To diminish the allure for farmers to cancel their CRP contracts, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Edward Schafer announced in late July that the USDA would not allow early termination without penalty.

Now, if a farmer decides to put CRP land back into production, he'll have to pay back all amounts that have been paid under the contract, including annual rental payments and cost share amounts, as well as a 25 percent penalty on one year's rental payment and interest costs on the money paid, Babcock said.

"South Dakota agriculture and our state's economy depend on CRP and other conservation easement programs for protection of marginal land and to provide habitat for pheasants and other game species," Thune said. "Farm bill conservation practices have become an integral part of nearly every farming operation in South Dakota, and we shouldn't be diminishing their effectiveness by allowing their useful life to end prematurely."

Government creates problems by meddling with free markets, so what to they do? Meddle some more. It is well past the time for us to get back to "limited government".