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Responses

 
 
Cindy has either prepared or forwarded two sets of relevant questions today.  The first four I believe are her prepared questions which seem to be well thought out and I will begin there.
 
(1)  Is it realistic to work for the repeal of the provision that allows land to qualify for the CRP after just two years of rowcrops?
 
This seems like a simple question but for me to attempt to give my opinion as to an answer to the problem somehow I need to know specifically what caused the problem. 
a.  What is the provision that has allowed this?
b.  When was this provision implemented?
c.  Why was this provision implemented?
d.  What specifically was in place prior to this implementation that had previously not allowed for the problem?
 
The only answer that I have ever heard is that it was the "Sodbuster" provision that had protected virgin areas but that it has been repealed.  I am a farmer but pretty much farm land that has always been row cropped so what exactly did "Sodbuster" say?
 
For #2  I feel that working for the creation and funding of a grassland easement program may be the best hope that we have to save prairies.  The WRP which seems to be a successful program was begun to stop the loss or at least recreate some lost wetlands.  If we are to be successful in saving the remaining prairies there is going to have to be an alternative to the landowners to just letting the land sit idle should they decide to quit running cattle or haying the areas, and also an alternative to an heir who inherits a native prairie who may not be as concerned with keeping it in its virgin state as the previous owner.  At some point in time each owner of a virgin tract will face the question of getting an income off that land.  I will stick my neck out here and venture to say that many of our best protected remnant or virgin prairies were at some time used for income producing activities i.e. haying and or grazing.
 
In order to get this accomplished we will have to convince people that the virgin areas are worth saving.  That they are something that just cannot be recreated at a later date if we so chose.  This will include both landowners as well as policy makers.  How will we go about this?  Some of the recreated areas may "look" better on the surface than some of the virgin areas.  Another monumental task may be the locating and identification of the virgin areas worth saving.  Obviously some ranking criteria as to virgin quality would be needed.  Are we prepared to agree on a draft of a quality index that is attainable by FSA and or NRCS personell in the field?  If determining the quality is something that requires the assistance of a botanist, which I would think could be the case, will this be a hurdle the USDA is unwilling to cross due to additional time and expense?
 
 
(3) How hard will it be to repeal the federal requirement that woody species be planted on all CRP marginal riparian pastureland?
 
First what is the wording of the exceptions that I have heard of, perhaps in Iowa, that some woody prairie species may be used?  Are the allowed species compatible with prairie?  What areas are allowed the use of these?  If this is a workable system would it be easier to expand on this than recreate or repeal  a program that had enough support somewhere to make it law? 
 
My personal opinion on this one is that this was probably not developed for "prairie specific" areas.  I do not know this to be a fact.
Remember that country wide there are probably a lot of marginal riparian pastures where it is not detrimental to prairies.  Remember also that in Central Iowa there is a prairie creek that has become somewhat of a "National Model" in buffer establishment which includes much woody vegetation.  Perhaps the most unfortunate part of this is that it is the only CRP practice I know of which makes parts of native prairie pastures eligible for enrollment and thus payments.  This I think necessitates the need for something like the grassland easement mentioned in (2 ) above.  (2) above would or could also alleviate potential problems from (1) above thus it is my opinion that of the first three questions posed here (2) may have the most promise.
 
Also as I see it  two of the three outlined purposes  of the CP22 Riparian Buffer are probably related to woody vegetation so it is potentially a workable practice in its place.  The task here is to get a workable practice for the prairies.
 
 
(4)   I do not have enough information on anything here.
 
These are my thoughts which are I hope what Cindy wanted  from us all.
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