New database targets federal farm conservation spending

The U.S. government has paid farmers billions of dollars to adopt conservation practices such as reduced tillage or planting cover crops.

But according to the Environmental Working Group, which this week released a public database of the spending, the federal programs have yielded little long-term environmental protection.

"That's the biggest challenge, or the biggest hole in our efforts to date," said Craig Cox, senior vice president for the Environmental Working Group. "Despite spending billions of dollars, there's no assurance that we are achieving lasting change."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture did not respond to an interview request.

It took the Environmental Working Group 28 Freedom of Information Act requests and seven years to get the data and create the public database. While the USDA had made some of the data accessible in the past, Cox said his group's effort targeted data that had previously been difficult to access and analyze.

The programs included in EWG's database are the Conservation Reserve Program, Environmental Quality Incentive Program, Conservation Stewardship Program and Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program. Nationally, the USDA spent nearly $30 billion on the four programs, according to the database.

In Minnesota, USDA has spent some $2.8 billion on conservation programs since 1995, the database shows. Yet water quality problems persist — ranging from harmful algae to nitrates in drinking water to the Gulf of Mexico dead zone.

Cox said the data should spark a public discussion of how to make farm conservation programs more effective.

"There is a lot of opportunity for the public, advocacy groups, interest groups to engage at the county and state level in helping shape how these programs are implemented," he said. "That's one of the main reasons we built this database."