June 26, 2011—The agriculture appropriations bill just passed by the House of Representatives dramatically slashes funding for conservation, including major cuts in the Farm and Ranchland Protection Program and the Grasslands Reserve Program. These cuts are a double whammy in that cuts now affect the budget baseline available for conservation programs in the next farm bill.

The House-passed bill cuts farm bill conservation funding by $1 billion for Fiscal Year 2012. This comes on top of $500 million in cuts in the fiscal year 2011 bill. These cuts target crucial and effective programs that are already oversubscribed with a long waiting list of farmers wanting for conservation funding.The only place these cuts can be changed is the Senate.

Yes, Congress needs to rein in federal expenditures—but conservation and natural resources spending is only 1.2 percent of federal spending and has grown less than 3% over the past 30 years!

Please call both your Senators Tuesday, June 28, and ask them to reject the House’s cuts to farm conservation programs. This is a coordinated action by conservationists across the country to make the maximum impact.

All Senators can be reached through the Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

When you reach your Senator’s office, ask to speak to the aid working on agriculture appropriations. Introduce yourself, and ask them to:

Please work to restore the cuts the House made to farm conservation programs in their Agriculture Appropriations bill.

Protect our working farms and ranches—every minute we lose more than one acre of farmland. Unfortunately, this isn’t work we can put off for tomorrow. Once we lose these lands, we can’t get them back.

Our farm conservation programs are vitally important to water quality and providing habitat for wildlife.  What we cut in farm conservation, we will have to make up elsewhere if we want clean water and wildlife.

Thank them for their time.