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32 Page 2 farmland preservation report (Farm bill, continued from page 1) ing GOP leaders who said the administra- tion had given no previous input on the bill. The White House budget office said the House farm bill fails to help smaller opera- tions, encourages overproduction, continues a policy of surpluses and "boosts federal spending at a time of uncertainty." Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Ve- neman testified before the Senate Agricul- ture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee in September on a report released by her de- partment that clearly views farm crop subsi- dies as obsolete, and supported objectives in the conservation bill the House had rejected. Conservation policy, the department report said, must include "stewardship in- centives on working farmland or retirement of environmentally sensitive land to respond to Americans' growing expectations about agriculture's role in promoting and protect- ing environmental quality." The rejected amendment, sponsored by Rep. Ron Kind, D -Wis., would have shifted about $2 billion annually from tradi- tional commodity payments to voluntary conservation programs, which would have increased conservation spending to more than $5 billion a year. The amendment had 140 co- sponsors. It was supported by the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, which included such organizations as American Farmland Trust. In addition to the largest farinland preservation boost ever proposed, it would have committed $75 million a year for forest land easements. Senate Agriculture Committee Chair- man Torn Harkin, D -Iowa, and Ranking Re- publican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, re- leased a joint set of objectives for the farm bill in September that included strong sup- port for conservation programs, renewable energy and quality of life in rural communi- ties, and other objectives that clearly indi- cate a shift in farm policy goals. October 2001 Lugar said the farm bill needed to fo- cus on conservation, rural development, a strong nutrition safety net, income assur- ance, trade, credit for beginning farmers, home -grown biomass energy, cutting edge research, and well managed forestry. That Lugar and Harkin together repre- sent a bipartisan agreement on policy changes in the farm bill, and that they both hail from Midwest states is no small factor in the outcome of the legislation that most affects how agriculture functions in the economy and affects the environment. "Sen. Harkin and Sen. Lugar are very interested in land conservation," said Russ Shay of the Land Trust Alliance, speaking before the annual national land conservation conference last month in Baltimore. "It's just lucky they are from states where there are a lot of corn and soybeans. They are fiscally conservative, but what they will try to do is drop the numbers, but put more of those dollars in conservation." But Lugar and Harkin are not entirely lone rangers to the commodity world when they champion conservation subsidies. Hog, cattle and poultry producers receive no di- rect subsidies, and, are facing new and ex- pensive clean-air and clean-water standards estimated to cost more than $12 billion over the next 10 years to meet. Conservation in the farm bill began in 1985 when farmers were first required to practice conservation to qualify for crop subsidies. The farm bills of the 1990s saw programs for wetlands, increased spending for the Conservation Reserve Program and the introduction of the Farmland Protection Program in 1996. The 2002 farm bill passed by the House, the White House said, would "continue to direct the greatest share of re- sources to those least in need of government assistance." Recent payments have gone to the largest 8 percent of farms while more