Food Security Act of 1985
The Food Security Act of 1985 is a significant piece of legislation in the United States aimed at addressing both agricultural economics and environmental conservation. Before its enactment, agricultural policies were often fragmented, focusing separately on price regulation and conservation efforts. The Act was introduced in response to growing agricultural surpluses and declining foreign demand, aiming to stabilize prices while promoting sustainable farming practices. It encompasses various provisions, including the establishment of the Conservation Reserve Program, which incentivizes farmers to withdraw environmentally sensitive land from production to protect soil and water resources.
The legislation introduced innovative measures like "sodbusting" and "swampbusting," which penalized farmers for converting fragile land into cropland without proper conservation plans. This shift represented a broader acknowledgment of environmental stewardship as a priority, alongside agricultural productivity. By the end of the 1980s, the Act contributed to a notable reduction in soil erosion and a decrease in the conversion of wetlands for agricultural use. However, the Act also faced criticism for its limitations, such as the lack of varied penalties for infractions and challenges for farmers trying to expand their operations. Overall, the Food Security Act of 1985 marked a pioneering attempt to integrate economic goals with environmental protections in American agriculture.
Food Security Act of 1985
Identification Federal agricultural legislation
Date Signed on December 23, 1985
By uniting the goals of the environmental movement and farm support groups, the Food Security Act became the first legislation to enact both conservation measures for farmlands and economic incentives for farm production.
In the decades prior to the 1980’s, important legislation existed to regulate the prices of agricultural products, which could fluctuate widely, to insure farm income, to provide loans to farmers, to set guidelines for the conservation of farmland by preventing erosion, and to adjust the total productive acreage of the nation. After World War II, attention focused also on the distribution of surplus products, as well as restricting cultivated land through the creation of the soil bank in 1956. Before 1985, however, government programs designed to protect production and prices and those directed toward conservation were independent of each other.
By the beginning of the 1980’s, lessening foreign demand for U.S. agricultural products and a corresponding decrease in market prices resulted in significant surpluses and a costly increase in governmental price supports for agricultural products. Moreover, conservation programs had not kept abreast of agricultural developments in terms of cost-benefit analysis, nor had the environmental impact of conservation programs received adequate attention. In fact, programs encouraging production could actually conflict with those that promoted conservation. The Food Security Act of 1985 attempted to address these developments. The act comprised seventeen titles, the first ten of which regulated prices and established quotas for dairy, wool and mohair, wheat, feed grains, cotton, rice, soybeans, and sugar. Title 11 focused on trade and Title 12 on conservation. The act created the Conservation Reserve Program, with sodbusting, swampbusting, and compliance programs. Thus, the Food Security Act was the first law to regulate both economic and environmental aspects of American agriculture.
Conservation Measures
Government soil conservation programs had a history dating back to 1935, when the Soil Conservation Service was established to protect farmland for production purposes. Part of the impetus for including a conservation title in the Food Security Act came from environmentalists, who recognized that it was easier to achieve environmental legislation within a farm bill than separately. In order to reduce the surplus of commodities, as well as to protect water and soil resources on U.S. farms, the Conservation Reserve Program, once created by the 1985 law, revived the soil bank. By 1990, it aimed to remove from production 40 to 45 million acres of highly erodable land for periods of ten to fifteen years per parcel. Participants in the program were to receive payments from government agencies in the form of rents and cost-sharing for planting ground cover. The program also sought to conserve habitats for fish and other wildlife and to ensure that American fiber and food production was sustainable.
The Food Security Act’s sodbusting provision required farmers wishing to convert erodable land into cropland to devise specific plans and submit them for approval. Such plans had to be begun by 1990. This rule denied financial support to farmers who continued to farm erodable or otherwise environmentally fragile land without putting conservation measures in place. Those farmers not complying with the act lost their eligibility for aid programs sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Unlike soil conservation initiatives, in 1985, measures to protect wetlands were relatively recent. Indeed, in the nineteenth century, the federal government had given the states incentives to drain wetlands rather than protect them. As such lands’ ecological value became understood, however, legislators became receptive to passing protective laws, starting with the Water Pollution Control Act of 1972. The Food Security Act increased such protections. Its swampbuster provisions, like the sodbuster rules, penalized farmers who converted wetlands by denying them the financial aid available through the various federal farm programs. Farmers could voluntarily drop out of such programs. The wording of these provisions suggested that Congress’s philosophy of conservation had changed over the previous decade. Rather than conserving land simply in order to ensure its future agricultural productivity, the new law was written to protect the environment as a good in itself.
As the first attempt to unite economic and environmental protections, the Food Security Act had some weaknesses. For example, wetlands could not be drained for crops, but a farmer could drain wetlands for other purposes, such as constructing buildings or roads. Furthermore, only one penalty existed; there was no consideration of the extent of the infraction. The sodbuster rule made it difficult for some farmers to increase their acreage, forcing them to withdraw from governmental support to remain competitive. A major farm bill in 1990 addressed the shortcomings of the 1985 act; it also gave farmers more flexibility in planting.
Impact
By the end of 1989, nearly 34 million acres of land had been retired from agricultural production, and surplus stocks had fallen, aided by a drought in 1988. Soil erosion dropped substantially during the decade following the act’s passage. The rate of wetland conversion for agricultural use had been falling even before the act passed. Between 1982 and 1992, that conversion rate averaged only twenty-five thousand acres per year, a number representing an 80 percent decrease from the period thirty years prior. The agricultural conversion of wetlands during the decade accounted for about 20 percent of the nation’s total annual loss of wetlands. The precise role played by the swampbuster act in the decrease in wetland conversion is unclear, however, because extraneous economic factors, such as a decrease in the cost-effectiveness of wetlands draining, may also have played a role.
Bibliography
Allen, Kristen, ed. Agricultural Policies in a New Decade. Washington, D.C.: Resources for the Future and National Planning Association, 1990. Collection of articles assessing the national agricultural situation five years after the Food Security Act. Includes economic, policy, and conservation topics.
Miranowski, John A., and Katherine H. Reichelderfer. “Resource Conservation Programs in the Farm Policy Arena.” In Agricultural-Food Policy Review: Commodity Program Perspectives. Agricultural Economic Report 530. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1985. Details the conflict between economic programs supporting agriculture and those focusing on conservation, especially in response to the heightened awareness of environmental issues.
Thurman, Walter N. Assessing the Environmental Impact of Farm Policies. Washington, D.C.: The AEI Press, 1995. Short, readable book that discusses the problem of externalities, that is, costs not directly involved in production, in this case, environmental costs. While it focuses on the situation in 1994, it provides information about the impact and relevance of the Food Security Act.