doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com CRP cuts IMPORTANT!

My point is simply this: Too many people have their fingers in the CRP pie. What started out as a 10-year set-aside to remove cropland from production if it met simple criteria--row crops for 3 prior years at least and classed highly erodible--has morphed into a political boondoggle.

I would venture to say that I am the only person on this site with a genuine stake in the issues presented. All the rest is social planning in respect to other people's property, whether it is the PF instigated stupid regulations against mowing noxious weeds or QU instigated regs (bordering on idiotic) directed toward disking-up established cover and setting wildfires.

By the way, I live on the Illinois side of the line in a state that is essentially bankrupt...and now it is going to create another bureaucracy to dissipate "kick-back money" from a federal government that is itself broke. Gimme a break. The PF & QU politicians have made their members personna-non-gratta when it comes to begging themselves on farms to hunt in the fall.

Farmers with mowed and un-mowed noxious weeds think back to June and July and the regulatory dog and pony show necessary to get special permission to mow, such like drawing maps, filing forms (in my case a 50 miles round trip from home to the FSA office), attend a hearing before county committee at the FSA office, and maybe get permission long after the weeds have gone to seed. Or a farmer might take the bull by the horns and simply scout the weeds while riding his tractor pulling his mower and address the problem instanter, and hope the little old ladies in tennis shoes don't catch him at it and blow the whistle. None of this was in the original bargain...so if you think anything is "VOLUNTARY" (your emphasis, not mine) when dealing with the government then that ocean-front property is still for sale here on the IL/WI state line.

As a person with a direct interest in the CRP I stated my position. I would get out now if I could, and will not re-up at the end of my contract. What started as a make-sense farm program has morphed into a multitude of political action jive jobs.

Query: Does PF actually do anything other than raise funds at political-action banquets and spend it lobbying in Washington? I was a PF guy long ago when our local chapter actually raised and released pheasants and seeded farmer's set-aside and cut deals to leave some corn rows standing...and we had pheasants then.

I live in the middle of what used to be a pheasant paradise with birds waking us up with their squawking and I'd count them as they squawked their way to roosts at dusk as I sat in my deer stand with my bow and arrow. Pheasants would be alongside the road in numbers then; now I never see a pheasant, and seldom ever hear one. And what is my local PF chapter doing with the funds it raises in the name of perpetuating "pheasants forever"? It donates $5,000 yearly to the Winnebago County Forest Preserve District to subsidize the busing of city kids to the Severson Dells Forest Preserve for a country picnic. Go figure!

And the local PF chapter sends money to the national office to lobby congress to restrict the farmer's ability to manage his own pheasant cover. PF has bit the hand that feeds, and farmers know it. And now that they can't beg their way onto CRP pheasant cover, they have engineered another "fix" in Washington to spread some money around. Political boondoggle? You decide! EDM

I think what Last Dollar suggests in his opening posting makes a lot of sense. It is important that sportsmen contact FSA and let them know we want the CRP program to continue because of the many benefits it provides to upland birds, other wildllife, soils, the ag economy, and good water and air quality.

But I have to differ a bit with Larry who says the future of the program is threatened by requiring the agency to do some impact analysis on their programmatic decisions.

The comments of many here show the program does have impacts on the environment, many of them highly positive. Some of the latest significant changes to the program came though not under the current administration but under George W. who was ready to allow widespread early spring mowing of CRP all the way north to the Canadian border, and the same mowing (without any payment reduction) under a new "Emergency Feed Use" provision just prior to the most recent election. It would have turned the CRP program into a hay production program instead of a commodity price support, soil, and wildlife conservation program.

Let's see... 40 million acres of farm land growing grass instead of grain with public subsidy payments from taxpayers ranging from $40-75/acre. I see it as an important investment. Others see it as socialism, welfare, or worse.

Larry, just do the math on the costs, the geographic extent and the resource effects.... Do major changes in the program warrant an EIS? Heck yes.

I have three farms with CPR land on them. The amount of regulation is as vast as you have pointed out. The program is ever changing and will go through another round of calls to close it down than followed by open it back up again. Worse the Fed. just seems to be of the mind set that every program, every payment and every promise it makes can be cut by them on a whim when ever they like.

Almost as bad are these special interest groups that seem to know more than anyone else and want to control everything as a way to justify their existence and increase the need for donations to further their great deeds. Like cancer they seem to spread and grow all out of proportion of their true value.

Like many I have less and less need for these programs. My land has been paid off for years. I do not need any of these benevolent programs that seem to assume that I am too stupid to manage my own land and need the collective wisdom of a group of people who left to their own devises would starve to death trying to grow food on a farm. Some of life is theoretical, some is common sense and some is BS. I know which I ascribe most of this to.

Could not have said it better KY Jon. On the other hand, you and I are landowners that manage our land for wildlife with our own money in addition to our profit crop.

I can understand the concern of non-landowning hunters regarding the demise of the CRP Program. Many farmers here in the pheasant capital of the world would go back to farming fence-row to fence-row, particularly with current prices of corn and soybeans, were it not for those government CRP payments. From what i know this would result in a serious decline in game bird populations due to lack of habitat.

Did the do-gooder's now in charge in DC just figure out that guys with guns are getting some benefit out of the CRP Program?

All I know is that the highest pheasant populations we have had in South Dakota were during the Soil Bank Program in the 50's and the CRP Program starting in the late 80's, with not much in between.

PS...I am a rancher...raise cows...don't grow crops...don't subscribe to any govt. programs...but I like to hunt pheasants back in the eastern part of the state.

Cass Sunstien the new Head of White House Regulatory Affairs,which oversees the USDA:

In 2004, he wrote a book on animal rights.
-Animals should be permitted to bring suit with humans as representatives.
-He does not believe our nation should eat meat.
-He wants to ban all hunting, it should not be allowed if it is only for sport.
-He believes everyone must be an organ donor. (His viewpoint is the law of our current explicit consent will be changed to "presumed consent.")
-Americans cannot remove rats from your home because it causes them pain.
-He does not believe in the 2nd Amendment, "individual rights to bear arms are wanted only by aggressive and social movements."