Congress Approves Leahy Provision
To Halt USDA Raiding Of Conservation Funding Programs
Important To Vermont And Its Farmers

Leahy Programs Help Curb Runoff That Reaches Lake Champlain

WASHINGTON (Tuesday, Dec. 7) – Congress late Monday passed and sent to the President’s desk legislation originally authored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) aimed at ensuring that Vermont’s farmers receive adequate resources to control agricultural runoff and conserve their open lands.  The provision, based on Leahy’s Farm Conservation Funding Protection Act introduced in October of 2003, passed the House without objection and will result in additional funding to help Vermont’s farmers conserve their land next year.  An identical bill passed the Senate on October 11, 2004.

Leahy, a senior member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, helped write the 2002 Farm Bill, which included $6.5 billion to help farmers affordably protect the environment and work their land by promoting use of farmland for agricultural production and habitat protection instead of development and sprawl.  Leahy explained that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) misinterpreted portions of these provisions and had been diverting more than $100 million from working-land conservation programs, including from two programs created by Leahy in earlier Farm Bills -- the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Farm and Ranchland Protection Program (FRPP) -- that traditionally help small farms throughout New England.

Leahy worked with the committee’s chairman, Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), and the committee’s leading Democrat, Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), to pass the measure that prevents USDA from diverting the funds from working lands conservation programs that help New England farmers.  Contrary to the law’s intent, USDA had been using the funds for a different conservation program that offers little assistance to Vermonters, Leahy said. 

“USDA’s wrong interpretation of the law was costing our farmers and was ignoring their interest in these programs,” said Leahy.  “This correction sets things right.  Now USDA will be forced to comply with the intent of Congress, funding conservation programs that help farmers across our region to invest in protecting their land.  This bill helps to give farmers the tools and incentives they need to help meet our major environmental challenges throughout Vermont.”

Since 1997, more than 500 farms throughout Vermont have benefited from EQIP funds to help build manure storage facilities, install buffers along waterways and change their farming practices to reduce the amount of phosphorus that runs off of their land into Vermont waters.  This year alone, Vermont has received $7.3 million in EQIP funds and $12 million overall in agricultural conservation funds. 

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