Resource Conservation Title of the 2002 Farm Bill: A Comparison of New Law with Bills Passed by the House and Senate, and Prior Law

Publication Date: June 2002

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

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President Bush signed the new farm bill, titled the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002, on May 13, 2002 (P.L. 107-171). Most of the agricultural conservation programs are in Title II. This report compares the Title II provisions of P.L. 107-171 with the conservation titles in the bills that passed both Chambers, and with prior law (primarily the 1996 Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act), in two tables. The first table presents the major provisions. The second table compares funding levels for each program, by year. The tables only include the programs and provisions that were enacted in Title II; conservation provisions in other farm bill titles, or those that were in the conservation title of one of the bills but either were dropped in conference or moved elsewhere in the bill are listed in the Introduction.

The conservation title reauthorizes many major conservation programs and authorizes new programs, mostly through FY2007. For existing programs, the provisions make many policy adjustments, and increase funding or raise enrollment ceilings. The new programs enacted in the Title provide additional conservation assistance for purposes or in locations that policy makers believe were not being adequately served. The largest of the new programs is the Conservation Security Program.

The new law greatly increases total conservation budget authority above current levels, and funds more of the conservation effort as mandatory spending through the Commodity Credit Corporation. Funding for most programs will increase from yearto-year, and will increase several-fold for some programs, such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the Farmland Protection Program. The Congressional Budget Office issued a baseline (for mandatory spending only) in April 2001 that was used by policy makers to calculate future spending patterns in this legislation. It determined that the baseline (that is, reauthorization of all programs with no changes in policy, and no new programs) for conservation programs was $11.6 billion over the next 6 years. The new law will increase mandatory spending for conservation programs by $9.2 billion over the next 6 years to a total of $20.8 billion, according to the CBO.

Farm bill conferees had to resolve many differences between the conservation titles of the two bills. The House bill primarily reauthorized existing programs, usually at smaller funding increases than the Senate bill, and included fewer new programs and less change to current conservation policy. By contrast, the Senate bill made more numerous and significant changes to existing programs and to conservation policies that generally expanded the conservation effort. It also created many more new programs, such as the Conservation Security Program. Among the most hotly debated issues over the farm bill was how much of the new funding should go to conservation programs (rather than commodity programs, for example), and how that funding should be divided among the programs.