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[bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

None of us live in the part of the country in this article.  But, Sage and 
others have caused me to want to learn more about these type issues.  When my 
father built his river house (On 16' high stilts), he had to get permission 
from the d*mn corps of engineers every time he wanted to move a couple of 
shovels full of dirt.  But, now, the same gov't is causing this , in the 
article, to happen

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Subsidies Spur Crops on Fragile Habitat

Special to The Washington Post 
Sunday, December 7, 2008; Page A03 

HIGHMORE, S.D. -- The ducks arrive in early April, zeroing in on thousands of 
shallow ponds fed by melting snow amid a vast prairie. As the pintails, 
mallards and blue-winged teal make nests in the grass and feed their young on 
abundant aquatic insects and freshwater shrimp, a 276,000-square-mile area 
reaching across five states and into Canada is transformed into one of the 
world's greatest habitats for migrating birds. 



Subsidies Spur Crops on Fragile Habitat

Crops Rise Where Grass Once Ruled

Now this swath, known as the Prairie Pothole Region because of the 
depressions formed long ago by retreating glaciers, is threatened by the 
steady advance of farming. Spurred by federal subsidies and two years of 
surging commodity prices, farmers increasingly are digging up the grass to 
plant crops, raising concerns among cattle ranchers, hunters and 
environmental groups about the future of land where Sioux hunters chased 
grazing buffalo a mere century and a half ago. 

Today, signs of change are clearly visible. Emerald fields of ripening crops 
stand out against a sea of tawny grass in which a single square yard can hold 
100 plant species. Rock piles tell the tale of fields cleared to make way for 
corn, soybeans, sunflowers or wheat. 


Whether U.S. taxpayers should be underwriting these changes has emerged as a 
controversial issue in farm country and in Washington. 

With rainfall in this part of South Dakota averaging only 17 inches a year, 
conservation groups say most farmers would not risk the start-up costs of 
plowing and preparing the ground without crop insurance, on which the federal 
government pays close to 60 percent of the premium. 

"If there was no insurance, you'd have to sit down and study it," 
acknowledged Kevin Baloun, who operates a large farm in Hyde County. "You 
might think twice about it." 

Efforts to curtail this subsidy ran into stiff opposition during 
deliberations on the recently enacted farm bill. 

The House and Senate both voted to deny or delay crop insurance on fragile 
land that had never been farmed. But last-minute lobbying by some farm 
organizations and crop-growing interests limited the restriction to five 
Great Plains states -- North and South Dakota, Montana, Iowa, and Minnesota. 

And the restriction will apply in a state only if the governor opts for it. 
So far, none has. 

"Basically, the provision was gutted," said Lynn Tjeerdsma, a former aide to 
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). 

Grass once covered the prairies from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains, 
but tens of millions of acres were lost as farming moved west. While a recent 
drop in record crop prices may slow the process for a few months or years, 
cattle ranchers, hunters and environmentalists fear they are fighting the 
tide of history. 

The environmental pressures have only grown with unprecedented changes in 
American agriculture brought on by increasing demand from foreign countries 
and the biofuels industry. In South Dakota alone, about 425 square miles of 
grassland were turned into farmland between 2002 and 2007, according to state 
and federal data. 



"Once you plow and plant, you can't ever duplicate what's lost," said Jim 
Faulstich, 58, a local rancher and vice chairman of the South Dakota 
Grasslands Coalition. 



Hyde County is at the center of this latest range war. It was not until late 
in the 20th century that farming began making major inroads here; weather and 
wind punished settlers who tampered with the fragile soils. Harlan Stoley, a 
retired farmer here, can recall the "black blizzards" of dirt that rose from 
fields plowed during the Dust Bowl era. 

But new drought-resistant hybrids and modern agricultural techniques that 
leave more of the scarce moisture in the soil have made farming an 
increasingly viable proposition. 

At the same time, 16 ethanol refineries built or planned for South Dakota 
have created a booming market for corn. 

About 10,000 acres of grassland and pasture, roughly 15 square miles, was 
converted to farming this year in Hyde and adjacent Hand counties, according 
to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Land being used to grow corn and 
sunflowers -- whose seeds are refined into oil or sold as birdseed -- has 
tripled since 1990 in those two counties. 


Fighting the trend is an array of hunting and conservation groups. The 
political circumstances in the West have forced them to try to protect the 
grassland without making it a national park or a federal preserve. "There is 
still strong resistance in the West to extending federal ownership of land," 
said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group. 

Scott Stephens, director of conservation planning for Ducks Unlimited, 
estimates that the Prairie Pothole Region of the Dakotas and Montana could 
lose an additional 3.3 million acres of native grassland to farming over the 
next five years if prices stay high and federal policy does not change. 

Pat Comer, an ecologist with NatureServe, a nonprofit scientific research 
organization, said the concern is less with the total acreage lost than with 
the fragmentation of bird habitat. "We're beginning to affect habitat needs," 
he said. 

Farmers take issue with that. 

"There's always going to be grass in this country," said Troy Baloun, a 
cousin of Kevin Baloun who farms outside Highmore. Farther north, he said, 
the ground is too rocky and hilly for farming, and grass abounds. 

The farming expansion clearly has been a boon to Hyde County's economy, which 
includes two grain elevators, a thriving farm equipment dealership and an 
aerial chemical-spraying service that keeps five AT-402 Air Tractors busy 
during the growing season. 

Land prices have risen sharply in step with commodity prices and the biofuels 
boom. As the cost of renting or buying land increases, cattle ranchers feel 
pressure to rent their grassland to farmers, or dig it up themselves for 
crops that may return more revenue per acre. 

"Times change; nothing stays the same," said Warren Solberg, a retired 
farmer. In the 1980s, it was "still pretty much prairie all the way from 
town," he recalled. "Now it's pretty much crops." 


Troy Baloun typifies the new breed of farmer who views the prairie with a 
businessman's eye. 

This year he has turned hundreds of acres of virgin sod, first removing rocks 
with a front loader, then moving in with a chisel plow and a disc harrow -- 
machinery that chops up the soil and readies it for crops. 

"With these prices, you just can't pencil it in with cows," he said. "If it 
don't make dollars, it don't make sense." 

If prices stay strong, he plans to plant wheat, corn or sunflowers in the 
newly turned ground next spring. He figures it will qualify for crop 
insurance. 

To some, such farming is happening with too little thought to the long-term 
impact. Driving the gravel roads north of town, Faulstich points to field 
after field that has been converted in the past decade. 


Faulstich shows off one field that his son seeded with prairie grasses such 
as switch grass, purple prairie clover, yellow coneflower and purple mountain 
vetch. The results have been spotty. "You can't replicate nature's way," he 
said. 

Under a 1991 federal program, about 1 million acres in South Dakota have been 
placed under federal conservation easements that prohibit plowing and ban 
haying before the end of the bird-nesting season. In return, the government 
pays the landowner 25 percent of the land's assessed value. 

But the government money set aside for easements covers less acreage today 
because of rising land values, said Harris Hoistad, manager of the Huron, 
S.D., wetland management district for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Another government effort to protect land, the Conservation Reserve Program, 
has also come under strain. The federal government pays landowners an annual 
rent to keep idle fragile land that is of marginal use for farming. But the 
payments have not kept pace with the rents that landowners can get from 
farmers. 

"There's a lot of farmland out here that shouldn't have been broken," said 
Troy Baloun. "If they want to stop sod-busting, they should make the program 
juicy enough. A lot of people would put it back in grass." 

The new farm bill directs the USDA to increase the Conversation Reserve 
payments but reduces the number of acres authorized for coverage under the 
program from 39.2 million to 32 million. 

Against this backdrop, conservationists sought during this year's farm bill 
debate to curtail the incentive for sod-busting that they say exists in the 
crop insurance program. A final compromise allowed governors of Prairie 
Pothole states to deny the subsidy on new grassland conversions. But 
environmentalists say it is doubtful that any governors will go against the 
farm lobby. 

Farm groups argue that it would be a serious mistake to cut insurance on land 
conversions at a time of rising food prices and growing worldwide demand for 
commodities. 

"If this is enacted, the ability of our agriculture to grow and compete with 
other states will be severely limited," said Lisa Richardson, executive 
director of the South Dakota Corn Growers Association.