Cattlemen Tell House Committee Their Concerns

July 18, 2001

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association Tuesday told the House Agriculture Committee that the next farm bill must remain a market-centered document. NCBA Vice-President of Public Policy G. Chandler Keys said, "The cattle industry has always depended on the market to determine prices. We have a long standing position that any government program should not adversely influence the market."

Cattlemen, he added, "see the relationship between the cattle industry and the feed grain industry as mutually beneficial and interdependent. We hope that members of the committee remind themselves that feed grain support programs that manipulate or artificially influence the price of grain will also affect each and every cattlemen in this country."

A key issue for cattlemen is the conservation title on the bill. NCBA supports the $15.5 billion increase proposed for the conservation spending over the next 10 years to provide technical assistance for farmers in their conservation work.

Keys said NCBA supports a $1.2 billion per year increase for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), half of which would go to livestock and poultry to help cattle producers meet ongoing conservation needs. The EQIP program provides funding to all livestock and poultry operations, regardless of size, to help conserve the natural resources on their lands.

"As livestock producers get ready to face an onslaught of new environmental regulations, the funding increase in EQIP programs may prove to be essential in helping them meet stewardship challenges," Keys said. He said further that while the installation of EQIP conservation practices will provide benefits to wildlife, the provision of wildlife habitat should not be a purpose of EQIP.

"NCBA believes that the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP) is the best programmatic mechanism for helping producers practice wildlife conservation on working agricultural lands. We encourage you to remove wildlife as an explicit purpose for EQIP, and support your effort to substantially increase funds for WHIP to meet producer's needs for doing wildlife work."