7.2 Foundation Principles

Certain critical principles must be adhered to as the country develops a working partnership with agriculture that must be sustained as part of our overall effort to meet the numerous environmental challenges we face. NASDA strongly encourages federal agencies to strengthen working relationships with the agricultural community and build more partnerships with farmers and ranchers to accomplish environmental goals. NASDA’s principles include:

Working Cooperatively with Farmers, Ranchers and Forest Landowners

NASDA believes the nation’s environmental efforts should emphasize and enlist the voluntary support and participation of farmers, ranchers and forest landowners. Crop and livestock producers are among the most dedicated and effective stewards of our natural resources because agriculture depends on continued access to clean air, water, and fertile land for its viability.

Voluntary, incentive-based initiatives have been highly successful and offer continuing opportunities for major environmental quality protection. NASDA supports this approach because locally-led initiatives are more effective in addressing diverse state and regional differences both in what farmers produce and in the most pressing agricultural environmental challenges they face.

Farmers are ready to do their part in accomplishing current and future national environmental goals. However, meeting new and ongoing environmental demands is a "make or break" challenge for producers. The food and agricultural production system is not organized in a fashion that allows increased costs of production to be passed on to consumers. Many on-farm conservation practices have high capital or management input costs that do not generate additional revenues for producers. As such, on-farm expenditures for conservation compete directly servicing farm debt and other family financial needs. NASDA believes it is critical to provide a balanced mix of policy tools, financial incentives, education and technical assistance to enhance environmental performance by producers.

Working Lands and Environmental Objectives

A financially healthy and profitable agricultural sector is essential to the production of a safe, fresh, and affordable supply of food, fuel and fiber. NASDA believes that environmental and conservation policy needs to balance a variety of concerns ranging from meeting regulatory requirements to farm viability. The economic impacts on individual producers must be considered along with environmental quality. Economically viable farming and ranching enterprises will enable producers to increase their efforts to maintain a healthy environment, protect our natural resources, and build stronger rural communities. Agriculture provides not only the food and fiber of America, but is the largest offset provider against human activity. A healthy agricultural landscape provides clean air, water and open space. In addition, the nation’s climate change policy should include agricultural offsets.

State Agencies and Programs are Key

State departments of agriculture are at the front lines with producers and rural communities and must be considered full partners in the development and implementation of national environmental programs and policies. State agriculture departments often tackle environmental, water quality, food safety and pesticide management issues before they reach national attention. They have long been the lead state agencies for implementing federal pesticide laws, and about half of the state conservation agencies are housed within the state agriculture departments. In this capacity, state agriculture departments oversee and implement soil and water conservation programs, non-point source water quality programs, and a variety of other environmental resource programs. State-led initiatives have provided significant and continuing opportunities for major environmental quality protection. NASDA believes federal agencies, particularly USDA and EPA, should provide states with the flexibility to account for regional differences in approach and should recognize "functionally equivalent" state programs that meet environmental goals.

There are numerous instances where states have effective environmental programs in place that are successfully addressing agriculture’s environmental challenges. It makes little sense for federal programs to duplicate the states’ effort in this instance. Federal agencies and programs should look to the state programs first, and defer to them whenever they are working and otherwise meeting the national goals and objectives. It is essential that all federal conservation programs and environmental laws and regulations recognize that state departments of agriculture must play the lead role for agricultural producers. Successful state initiatives, such as the Idaho OnePlan, New York State’s Agricultural Environmental Management (AEM) program, and the Michigan Environmental Assurance Program (MAEAP), should be promoted as primary tools for agriculture in their efforts to achieve regulatory compliance.

Sound Science

The foundation of the agricultural sector in this country has long been the development and adoption of science-based practices derived from reliable data and research. NASDA believes that policy makers and regulatory agencies with responsibility for natural resource and environmental programs should ensure that all information used or relied upon in the decision-making process is based on sound science, technical analysis, and best available data. All major science policies and methodologies for assessing risks, costs and benefits, and other modeling systems should be subject to rigorous peer review.

Coordinate and Simplify Programs

NASDA believes more integration, coordination and implementation of programs at the federal level is necessary. Federal "stovepiping" and overlapping jurisdiction is a significant problem for many conservation and environmental resource programs. Unnecessary duplication of programs, services and requirements diminishes program productivity, wastes taxpayer dollars, and is confusing for producers/those who are regulated. Unnecessary duplication of programs, services and requirements not only wastes the valuable resources of agencies and the public they are serving, but also creates a tremendous lack of confidence in the programs and the people administering them. Better program coordination will help leverage resources and ensure more effective environmental/conservation benefits are realized. It is essential that entities within agencies coordinate their efforts to ensure consistency. Goals and objectives should be clear and comprehensible.

Private Property Rights

All conservation and environmental programs, laws and regulations must respect personal property rights. In recent decades, the intrusion of federal regulations into property owners' land use decisions has increased dramatically. The result has been an unprecedented surge in litigation directed toward the federal government. Much of this litigation has been predicated on the theory that a particular federal land use regulation has violated rights guaranteed by the "just compensation clause" of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Unfortunately, the exact scope of the rights guaranteed by the "just compensation clause" has proved elusive. Landowners seeking to determine their rights under the Constitution face the prospect of protracted litigation, open-ended legal costs, and an uncertain outcome. At the same time, regulators are themselves uncertain over the extent of the responsibilities under the Constitution with respect to private property rights.

The constantly evolving national debate over the need to protect the environment and conserve the country's natural resources, while at the same time ensuring private property rights, presents one of the most difficult policy and legal issues now before Congress. There is a wide range of federal programs that either directly or indirectly affect the use of private property. The development and implementation of many of these programs should, to the maximum extent practicable, reflect the need to avoid unnecessary and unwarranted impacts on the sanctity of private property. In a rush to protect the environment and conserve natural resources, lawmakers must never lose sight of the critically important role that private property plays in our society.

If Congress mandates that federal agencies must consider the likely impact of their programs on private property, such a mandate will provide developing programs a blueprint to balance the need to protect and conserve natural resources with the concerns of private property owners. To avoid the conflict over private property rights, federal and state agencies should move away from the "central command and control" model and toward programs that provide incentives for landowners to conserve appropriately defined natural resources, with voluntary compliance being the ultimate goal.

 Environmental Assurance

Aside from the desire to foster good stewardship, an important aspect of any voluntary program is the benefit gained by a participating agricultural producer in terms of reduced burden associated with regulation and liability. Where an agricultural producer participates in a voluntary resource management-planning program with demonstrated benefits, the producer should receive significant and meaningful credit for this work. Voluntary programs should offer some form of presumption of compliance with the objectives of regulatory programs (e.g., water quality standards, habitat protection, etc.), appropriate relief from water-related permitting requirements, and/or reduced liability associated with off-farm environmental degradation (e.g., from undefined sources). The so-called environmental assurance or "safe harbor" concept incorporates relief from regulation and enforcement for landowners where acceptable voluntary management practices are put in place.

Voluntary programs are the preferred and most effective means to working with farmers and ranchers to help them manage the resources on their operations wisely and to protect the quality of the environment. However, the potential exists for resource management problems to develop on an operation that is not participating in one of the many effective programs. If these problems are significant, it is possible that the inaction of a few non-participants could lead the general public to believe that these problems are present on the majority of operations.

In this instance, a voluntary program will not be comprehensive enough to address the full range of resource needs and situations that may exist. As a result, NASDA recommends that there be provisions or processes to provide opportunity and resources to correct these problems not addressed by the voluntary programs. When a producer fails to take what is generally recognized to be appropriate and prudent steps to correct a significant resource problem, NASDA recognizes the need to pursue appropriate follow-up to assure that such problems or situations are resolved. Provide for graduated certification and implementation which would afford varying degrees of 'safe harbor' or 'no action assurance' for producers.

Federal programs are neither effective nor fair if they do otherwise. They become tools for abuse and are often expanded through court decisions beyond what may have been intended by Congress. This is particularly true where Congress has authorized agencies to regulate, or the courts have allowed citizen suits to direct federal policy. And such programs impose on certain unfortunate landowners the obligation to dedicate the value of their property to the public purpose of preserving natural resources, often without sufficient opportunity for those landowners to protect their interests. It is imperative that Congress understands the impact of regulatory programs on private property and prevents the involuntary "taking" of private property by the government.

Congress should eliminate government activities that infringe on private real property rights without compensation and move toward incentive-based programs for natural resource protection with the ultimate goal of private/public voluntary cooperation to protect and enhance those natural resources.

 The federal government owns 32 percent of the land area in the U.S. and two percent of the world’s land area. Federal lands are 3.5 times larger than the original 13 colonies and 4.5 times larger than Texas. Additional federal land acquisition should be accomplished by exchange or sale of surplus federal property whenever possible. Where the federal government owns 25 percent or more of a state, there should be a no net loss of private property within that state. Further, Congress should retain its oversight function of all federal land acquisition.

Confidentiality of Data