End of an era

[TylerS]

Dennis Anderson's recent article in the Strib should be a wake-up call for all of us hunters, whether you think it applies to you or not. I've been harping on the loss of CRP for years, but to mostly deaf ears. Nodak is a shred of its former self, and by next fall, will be hardly recognizable. You think hunting was tough this year?! HA!!! Just you wait...

Strib article

[FishinFools]

Bad topic, informative article. And, well written! Man...wish we had an outdoor writer like that in our Pioneer Press. We have a new b-oob who writes about recently killed ducks flopping around in his stomach. Painful to read his articles...but it is my Sunday outdoor section fix, so I do it anyway.

[GFNER]

Excellent article! I read it Sun. and don't pretend to be an expert but saw firsthand in SW MN how family farms were bought by large corps. drained,and cleared of trees to grow more crop. This whole ethenol thing IMO is the biggest crock of @#!% I've ever witnessed. It's supposed to save the environment but has done absolutely the opposite while driving the price of everything else up. Hell the stuff is only a few cents cheaper at the pumps even. It's all about the F'n almighty dollar!

[blindluck]

Iowa has already been stripped for crops. It is what we do I guess. To be honest this has me more worried. Sorry to get political on you. I apologize if it has been posted before.

washington whispers

[BoxMN]

I saw the CRP leaving last year in NoDak, and my farmer friends said that tons more is coming off this year. I probably hunted my last hunts in one of their just awesome CRP areas, that they said is all coming out in 2012...

I can't really blame the farmers, it is their business and they see a chance to make money. I do blame the same thngs you guys do in what is causing that. But the big thing is it is shame... and a tragedy for wildlife and widlife lovers and hunters.

[certified jumbo]

this is not good and its only going to get worse.

[BLACKJACK]

Where we hunt SW of Aberdeen, 10 years ago you couldn't find a cornfield, now there are whole sections of corn and soybeans. Plus the rancher/farmers are moving away from beef cows and feedlots to - more corn, tearing up fences, cleaning up rock piles that their ancestors dumped in the swamps years ago, cutting hay out of any little spot that they can get into. And I read the other day that Monsanto has developed even more drought resistant corn so it will only get worse!!

Does all that sound familar?? Its been happening in MN for the last 50 years, and we know how good the pheasant hunting is here.

The farm programs need to change to remove the incentives (subsidized crop insurance) that encourage them to break up more grass and old pastures. They can't lose, if they have a poor crop, the insurance pays them, if they get good rain fall, they make big bucks.

[GFNER]

A late old friend of mine was a former Co. crop assessor and farmer in SW MN. I commented to him one day how I felt sorry for the farmers( I think it was a drought year) he told me ..Don't you dare feel sorry for them, most are making more on a bad year than they would on a normal year. I don't mind the family farmers being compensated by the Gov. but really how many farms are family run anymore? I think most of the subsidies are going right into the pockets of big corporations and that's BULL%@#$!!!

[B. Amish]

it's not just crp. more habitat is being lost when pastures of native prairie sod are being turned over.

[TylerS]

Just everyone wait: on dry year and it's dust bowl all over again. Had it not been for our most recent snow, I'd wager we'd be having brown outs at this very moment. There's a REASON those marginal lands should be left fallow, and not just because they aren't worth the effort to farm...

[hockeybc69]

Good luck using that excuse to stop the path we are on.... Just saying...

Its a run away train now...

[Red Cabin]

+1

[TylerS]

Good luck using that excuse to stop the path we are on.... Just saying...

Its a run away train now...

No excuse. It's the truth. But money talks. Agreed there's not much we can do but watch and whimper as all that habitat gets plowed under...

[B. Amish]

well, if you like crp and want it to be an option in the future then you need to make your voice heard. the 2008 farm bill is expiring and there is a growing concern that crp will undergo serious changes on the next farm bill.

also, crop insurance is being looked at very closely. there are serious problems when you can break native prairie, drain wetlands, and still participate in federal crop insurance.

if you want habitat, nothing else comes close to what the farm bill provides.

the next best thing would be to not vote for collin peterson if he's in your district.

[Musky Buck]

I also wonder about this some, where I live the land to the east was crp, now it's plowed etc. and farmed and now we have this lovely airplane spraying our creek bottom with chemical, sure he shuts the spray off just before the treeline but that crud is dripping right into the creek as he circles about to make another pass and another and another etc. Less CRP should = more chemical.

[creepworm]

Call me crazy, even I am thinking I am crazy on this one, but has any hunter-based group such as DU PF approached the ohter side, such as the Sierra Club or some other organization we would label as crazy. This CRP issue is something that both hunters and preservationists should be concerned about. I think if we could work together on this issue it would be a large enough voice that there would be no politician that would not listen.

[kgpcr4]

You can thank ethanol for the current situation. 8.00 per bushel corn makes CRP a waste. Why do you think food prices are so high? at 8.00 a bushel you cant afford to feed cattle or chickens. 53% of all corn production goes into ethanol. A very poor quality fuel. Its costs almost as much to make as what it sells for. Its a very poor alternative to oil. couple that with what 8.00 a bushel corn has done for CRP and food prices and you have the disaster Dennis Anderson talked about

[cbrooks]

Call me crazy, even I am thinking I am crazy on this one, but has any hunter-based group such as DU PF approached the ohter side, such as the Sierra Club or some other organization we would label as crazy. This CRP issue is something that both hunters and preservationists should be concerned about. I think if we could work together on this issue it would be a large enough voice that there would be no politician that would not listen.

I won't call you crazy creepworm. We need to be coming up with a solution to stop all the CRP land we have lost and about to lose. I think you have the right idea. When it comes to lobbyist $ congress you need all the clout you can get. Man I hate politics and how it works in Washington

[harvey lee]

Call me crazy, even I am thinking I am crazy on this one, but has any hunter-based group such as DU PF approached the ohter side, such as the Sierra Club or some other organization we would label as crazy. This CRP issue is something that both hunters and preservationists should be concerned about. I think if we could work together on this issue it would be a large enough voice that there would be no politician that would not listen.

I am sure the PF and DU and other wildlife groups have thier lobbyists hard at work on this and have for a long time.

Trouble is, the big dollars get what they want.

[harvey lee]

well, if you like crp and want it to be an option in the future then you need to make your voice heard. the 2008 farm bill is expiring and there is a growing concern that crp will undergo serious changes on the next farm bill.

also, crop insurance is being looked at very closely. there are serious problems when you can break native prairie, drain wetlands, and still participate in federal crop insurance.

if you want habitat, nothing else comes close to what the farm bill provides.

the next best thing would be to not vote for collin peterson if he's in your district.

I agree when one can plow up some low productioin acres and then have a poor crop, then collect money for the loss, that is hogwash but, thats what the Gov allows the farmers to do.

Same thing as when they allow one to drain swamps and then years later, one cannot touch them without jumping through many hoops.

The Gov says do this and then 20 years later, they say they have to fix what they messed up.

Clowns need to rethink many of these freebie programs.

[CodyDawg]

Well, what have you done the help the problem? There is a general CRP signup coming in March, that isnt getting enough attention.

What is PF doing? They are lobbying hard as was assumed. In addition, they are hiring 4 more Farm Bill Biologists (bringing the total to 9 I believe) to house in FSA/NRCS offices across MN to work with landowners so they can make informed decisions about CRP and other farm programs. One of the biggest problems is how hard it is to understand these programs and working with the govt agencies, in certain places, can be frustrating at a minimum.

Personally, I have delivered 4 presentations to raise money for the FBB position in my county and have raised about 75% of the money needed at this point. What can you do? Support PF. Write letters. Dont just complain on an internet forum, get involved people!

[InTheNorthwoods]

Alot of complaining about farm subsidies in this thread. Yet CRP is a farm subsidy program in itself. You can't have it both ways. The answer to the loss of CRP is simple, CRP prices need to be higher than the benefit of raising crops on that same ground. Right now, that isn't the case.

It's simply about profitability. When commodity prices are down, and you have certain blocks of marginal land, more people enroll in CRP. When prices are up, it pays better to farm that marginal land than to let it sit idle.