Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said today that farmers should be allowed to plant and harvest switchgrass on millions of acres set aside for conservation -- a move that environmentalists say could undermine a program that sets aside vital bird habitat.
The Conservation Reserve Program -- which environmentalists and hunting and fishing groups call the "holy grail for wildlife" -- provides more than 34 million acres of habitat. The program requires landowners to follow strict rules to idle the land and keep native grasses planted on it -- seldomly harvesting or haying the grasses under a conservation plan.
But Schafer wants to see the program used for cellulosic energy development as well. He told reporters at a renewable energy conference in Washington today that it would be a "great idea" to harvest switchgrass as an energy crop on Conservation Reserve Program land.
"It would only make sense to me that we should be allowing the planting of switchgrass on CRP, it gives it a productive capacity ... that kind of production should be taking place," Schafer said.
Julie Sibbing of the National Wildlife Federation said it would "completely undermine the purposes of the program" to allow farmers to plant and harvest switchgrass for energy development.
"CRP is the Holy Grail for fish and wildlife, and to turn it into a production program overnight would not only tip over the grail, it would turn it upside down," said Tim Zink of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.
Schafer is proposing to allow farmers to plant native grasses on the land then permitting periodic harvests for energy use. The argument is that the land should be able to have multiple uses, to help take the strain away from the increasing demand for more farm production for ethanol and food.
But Sibbing and other environmentalists say that efficient energy production -- even of cellulose crops -- cannot be compatible with wildlife goals and USDA should look to different programs to support cellulosic ethanol.
The 20-year-old CRP program gives producers payments for 10-to-15 year contracts to convert highly erodible cropland to grass. It is vital for ducks and pheasants in the prairie pothole region and a favorite of environmental and hunting groups alike. The Fish and Wildlife Service credits CRP with helping to produce more than 2 million ducks a year.
But the program is facing a tight squeeze from biofuels. Farmers planted crops on more than 2 million acres that were previously enrolled in the program last year, and USDA expects another 2 million acres to drop out this year. Meanwhile, the Agriculture Department has not conducted any new signups for contiguous tracts of CRP land -- the large sections that environmentalists say are most useful for wildlife.
"It seems like people are thinking we have to maximize production on every inch of land, and if the plan is to have no wildlife that's fine," Sibbing said.
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