From VERHEY@wsuvm1.csc.wsu.eduSat May 25 00:09:48 1996 Date: Fri, 24 May 96 18:43:17 PDT From: VERHEY@wsuvm1.csc.wsu.edu To: sanet-mg@amani.ces.ncsu.edu Subject: Unfortunate view of CRP in NYT Friends, You might like to take a look at the Op-Ed piece in today's (Friday, May 24). (The NYT has a free--for now--web site at www.nytimes.com.) In the piece, one James Bovard inveighs against several farm programs, mainly CRP. Noting increasing commodity prices and the probability of increased food prices, he writes, "The most harmful tourniquet on farm output is the Conservation Reserve Program....This year the program is paying farmers to leave 36 million acres idle....The program was begun in 1985, purportedly to protect environmentally sensitive land--fields vulnerable to erosion, for example. But it is largely a means of increasing Federal handouts." He goes on (and on...) in the same vein. Maybe it's just me, but Mr. Bovard seems ill-informed at best, and politically vendictive at worst (he argues that President Clinton is intentionally trying to create a grain shortage). Needless, to say, the NYT op-ed page is fairly widely read, and to the extent that Mr. Bovard's argument is in error, it needs to be rebutted. Hopefully someone with more time will respond--at the moment I barely have time to write this. Steve Verhey Dept. of Crop & Soil Sciences Washington State University