GREENE, Iowa -- The proposed Build Back Better bill is getting attention for a host of funding possibilities, including one area flying under the radar: sustainable agriculture.

Programs to reimburse farmers for adopting environmentally friendly practices could see benefits. The Biden administration's proposed public spending package includes $13 billion for the Working Lands Program, which provide financial and technical assistance to help farmers reach their conservation goals.

Kalee Olson, policy associate at the Center for Rural Affairs, describes the programs as underfunded and oversubscribed. She pointed out it creates tough choices for producers waiting for reimbursement approval.

"For some farmers, it can be a gamble on whether they want to go ahead and, say, plant cover crops, and hope they'll be accepted into the program and be partially reimbursed," Olson explained.

Supporters of the programs say more waiting periods or lack of funds might scare off future applicants who don't want to take on the risk. Despite some gains over the past decade, only a small percentage of Iowa farmland is planted with cover crops.

The Biden plan has won House approval, but faces obstacles in the Senate, with some members saying it is too broad in scope and too expensive.

Mike Ruby, a farmer in Greene in the northern part of the state, has been planting cover crops for about 15 years. He said he has never had issues in applying for cost-sharing aid through the Conservation Stewardship Program, but feels a funding boost could attract other farmers who are not ready to take the leap.

"I think it would be definitely beneficial for the ones that haven't been trying to entice them to giving it a try," Ruby contended.

According to the annual Iowa Farmland Ownership and Tenure Survey, farmers who are reluctant to plant cover crops cite reasons such as costs, as well as not having enough time. But longstanding program enrollees say these practices can help improve soil health, which eventually improves a farmer's bottom line over time.

Working without fanfare, federal scientists at 22 U.S. sites maintain the nation's agricultural plant species collected since 1898, including crops native to New Mexico. But the Trump administration's DOGE agency has fired them. The move creates uncertainly for hundreds of crop species that undergird the country's food system. The U.S. National Plant Germplasm System safeguards the genetic diversity of agriculturally important plants.

Iago Hale, associate professor of specialty crop improvement at the University of New Hampshire, said the potential loss of these "seed bunkers" should alarm every American.

"If you subsist totally on chicken nuggets and KFC, that's fine - understand that that comes back to plants grown in the field. The breading on your fried chicken, the French fries that you're eating - these are all products of crops, and this is how it works," he said.

A court order has temporarily reinstated some of the 300 NPGS scientists, but it's unclear when their work will resume - putting 600,000 genetic lines of some 200 crop species in jeopardy. New Mexico's pinto beans, jujube and ornamental species are included in the crop research and improvement dataset historically housed through the NPGS.

Hale said the NPGS is central to the nation's preparedness, because the food system is only as safe as our ability to respond to the next plant disease. Unless dormant seeds are continually cared for and periodically replanted, Hale noted the lines will die, along with their evolutionary history. Hale said potatoes, the fourth-largest crop, require even more care than wheat or corn.

"They're not maintained as seed, they're maintained as potatoes - it's a clonally propagated crop, and there is no long-term storage for those things. So, the nation's entire potato collection has to be grown out every year - has to be regenerated every year, without fail, or it will die. And the potato season has been disrupted," he explained.

Hale said apples also must be maintained as living plants in the open field and scientists follow strict requirements to sustain genetic purity. In the 1980s, he notes, scientists at a gene bank in New York helped identify genetic traits that made apples resistant to several destructive diseases, including deadly fire blight.


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Missouri ranks second in the nation for the number of farms, with more than 85,000.

Beginning farmers in the state and across the nation may soon get a boost from Washington. Beginning farmers are defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as those who have farmed for 10 years or fewer.

The bipartisan "New Producer Economic Security Act," recently introduced in Congress, proposes a USDA pilot program to help new farmers overcome key challenges such as securing land, funding operations and accessing markets. Between 2017 and 2022, Missouri saw an almost 8% drop in farmland, making it harder for young farmers to get started.

Nicholas Rossi, policy specialist for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, explained the looming changes in the agricultural industry.

"The average age of a farmer in the United States is 58 years old, I think a little above 58 years old," Rossi pointed out. "We see in the next couple of years there's going to be one of the largest transfers of agricultural land this country's seen in a long time."

The program could fund low- or no-interest loans, land-access grants and community-ownership models such as land trusts and co-ops.

Nationally, the 2022 Census of Agriculture showed beginning farmers make up 30% of the country's more than 3 million farmers, an increase from just over 26% in 2017.

The stakes are high when it comes to who gains access to farmland in the years ahead, Rossi emphasized.

"A lot of that land that's transferred is either going to go and just continue to make the biggest farms bigger, or it can go towards this next generation of farmers," Rossi stressed. "We can hope we try and reverse that trend of decreasing amount of family farms in the U.S., and also looking at decreasing the average age of farmers in the United States."

Statistics show states along the East and West coasts had a high share of farms with beginning producers compared with farms in the Midwest. Rossi hopes to see the pilot program become a permanent part of the comprehensive Farm Bill.


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West Virginians are more concerned about bird flu's effect on grocery costs rather than health implications, and Republican voters are more likely to distrust Centers for Disease Control and Prevention information about the virus, according to a new poll from the health policy research and news organization KFF.

Nearly nine in 10 adults across parties, race and ethnicity, and household income levels are "very" or "somewhat" concerned bird flu will increase the cost of food in the U.S.

Audrey Kearney, senior survey analyst for KFF, said rising economic pressure has households more worried about paying for housing, gas, transportation and everyday expenses.

"We found that only half of the public said that they are really hearing a lot about bird flu on a day-to-day basis," Kearney reported. "It might not be resonating in the way of health but it definitely is resonating in when they go grocery shopping."

Since 2022, officials have identified just two backyard flocks, around 260 birds, in the state affected by the virus. Earlier this year, the West Virginia Department of Agriculture issued a suspension on all poultry exhibitions and sales statewide, calling the move a precautionary measure.

Kearney added one of the biggest takeaways from the data is Americans now have different levels of trust between community experts they are interacting with on a daily basis, and major institutions.

"Messages from people's doctors are going to be the most well received and probably the most effective on that front," Kearney explained.

Currently, the CDC recommends people avoid close contact with sick animals and avoid unpasteurized milk products as precautions against bird flu, while eggs purchased from grocery stores are considered safe.

Since April 2024, 70 human cases of bird flu have been reported in the U.S. Of those, 41 cases were associated with exposure to sick dairy cows and 26 were associated with exposure to poultry.


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