House and Senate conferees on the Farm Bill have been meeting this
week to try to reach agreement on a final Farm Bill.

Late last Friday (April 11), Senate negotiators provided their House
counterparts with a framework outline of a new Farm Bill, and this
week House negotiators indicated that much of the general outline was
acceptable to them. The framework would provide $4 billion in new
funding for conservation programs, but would cut in the size of the
Conservation Reserve Program by millions of acres.

$4 billion is less than the $5 billion in new funding that NWF and
other hunting, fishing, conservation and environmental organizations
have pressed for. The framework does not indicate how the funds would
be split within the conservation title. $4 billion would be enough to
reauthorize programs like the Wetlands Reserve Program and Grassland
Reserve Program that would otherwise expire, to continue most current
conservation programs at roughly their current level, and to restore
some of the cuts made to conservation programs since 2002.

Still unresolved is the proposed SodSaver provision, and whether some
version of it will be included in the final bill. The House and
Senate bills included differing versions of a provision that would
reduce taxpayer-funded incentives for farmers to break out native
prairie and other grasslands to plant crops.

Also at issue are the means to pay for the $10 billion in new funds
proposed to be spent over the $597 billion 10-year budget baseline
for USDA Farm Bill programs, and whether a $2.5 billion package of
tax incentives proposed by the Senate will be included in the bill.
That includes about $0.8 billion in tax beaks for private landowners
who address endangered species habitat.

The conference committee is working through each title, and
conservation is likely to be one of the last. But, as Senator Saxby
Chambliss said, "nothing is settled until the whole deal is done."

On April 16, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5813, a bill to
extend farm programs until April 25, 2008, in order to give conferees
time to resolve remaining issues. The Senate is expected to pass the
bill as well. White House has expressed reservations about signing
another short-term extension unless Congress is closer to agreement
on a final Farm Bill. The latest extension of the Farm Bill expires
April 18.

Duane Hovorka