Friends of Rural New York

The NY Times story on EQIP grants funding lagoon construction left out
one important fact.  There is no oversight on how the EQIP grant money
is spent.  None.  They are simply issued a check to spend as
they see fit.  Nobody checks up on them to see if they are using it
for conservation purposes.  The farmer can buy a sports car, a new
tractor or a new SUV with it if he wants, and many of them do.

January 13, 2008
THE FEED
In the Farm Bill, a Creature From the Black Lagoon?

By ANDREW MARTIN
IT may not surprise you to learn that much of the pork and chicken and beef and milk that you buy at the grocery store comes from huge, industrial-size operations that bear little resemblance to the quaint family farms that adorn many food packages.

But you may be surprised to learn that your tax dollars have helped pave the way for the growth of these livestock megafarms by paying farmers to deal with the mountains of excrement that their farms generate. All of this is carried out under the rubric of “conservation.” Congress is about to renew the program — and possibly even expand it — as part of a new farm bill wending its way through the Capitol.

It’s called the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, also known as EQIP — a name that suggests an initiative to encourage farmers to improve environmental standards.

And, in fact, when the program was created as part of the 1996 farm bill, that’s exactly what it was. At the time, the government agreed to pay a share — up to 75 percent — of a conservation project, and the payments were limited to $10,000 a year. Farmers used the money for small-scale projects that had environmental benefits, like planting cover crops to prevent erosion and soak up excess nitrogen or installing fencing to better manage grazing cattle.

But in the 2002 farm bill, the program was changed at the livestock industry’s behest, and funding for the program was raised from $200 million a year to, eventually, $1.3 billion. Yearly payment limits were scratched, replaced by a provision that farmers could get no more than $450,000 during the bill’s life.

Another change: large-scale livestock facilities that once were not eligible for EQIP money were encouraged to participate under the 2002 bill.

As a result, many farmers are using their EQIP money for animal waste management practices, which include helping to pay for lagoons to store manure. The lagoons are lined ponds that are used to keep the waste until it can be pumped out for some other use, usually as fertilizer on nearby fields. In some instances, manure lagoons have leaked or overflowed into the groundwater or neighboring streams.