Farm Bill 2018: Protecting Conservation Programs on America's Grasslands

North America’s grasslands are our Amazon, home to pronghorn antelope, endangered songbirds, and hundreds of other wild species found nowhere else on Earth. Yet millions of acres of grasslands that make up the Great Plains are plowed up each year. In fact, in recent years, the Great Plains of the US and Canada lost intact grasslands faster than the Brazilian Amazon lost rain forest.

In 2018, Congress will take up two bills that are critical to the conservation of the grasslands of the Great Plains: the federal spending bill and the Farm Bill. These bills control funding for conservation programs that provide farmers and ranchers with the financial and technical assistance needed to produce food in ways that protect grassland habitats and the wildlife that live there.

WWF supports programs and policies designed to keep grasslands intact such as:

• The Conservation Reserve Program, which provides a financial incentive to keep environmentally sensitive land out of crop production and has a grassland specific section to protect grasslands from development or conversion. This land then provides wildlife habitat, enhances soil, and stores water.
• The Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, which permanently protects grassland from commercial development and conversion.
• In six states, if native grasslands are plowed under to instead produce crops, crop insurance premium support is significantly reduced. The Sodsaver policy should be strengthened to eliminate unintentional loopholes and expanded to every state.
• Nationwide, the Conservation Compliance policy encourages the conservation of wetlands and highly erodible land by connecting this work to eligibility for crop insurance premium support.