WASHINGTON, October 9, 2003 - Family farmers renewed their call today for strict payment limits per operation on federal funding for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), pointing to a just-published report by the Corporate Research Project (CRP). The CRP report is critical of the 2002 farm bill's changes in the EQIP program, which had benefited family farmers under its original form in the 1996 farm bill.

The Corporate Research Project paper, written by Associate Director Mafruza Khan, includes the following criticisms of the current EQIP program:

* EQIP is not the environmental quality program it was intended to be; rather it is a harmful subsidy program that will result in further expansion of corporate interests in livestock.

*EQIP ranking criteria can result in environmentally-damaging technologies being favored over sustainable methods.

*Public oversight of the EQIP program is impossible due to new special exemptions of key data from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

"The Corporate Research Project report exposes some of the nasty politics behind the harmful changes found in the new EQIP program," said Bill Christison, Missouri farmer and President of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center. "The meatpacking industry and corporate-aligned commodity groups may have claimed to represent family farm interests, but they were actually just carrying the political water for corporate agribusiness and large livestock factories. Once again, we're calling on the Senate and House of Representatives to pass an Amendment and help move the EQIP program closer to its original purpose of supporting family farm conservation projects."

Earlier this year, U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (IA) announced that he planned to introduce the EQIP amendment during debate on agriculture appropriations. The Grassley amendment would scale back the per farm payment limitation for EQIP from $450,000 to $300,000, and apply the limit to all the farming sites that are part of a single operation, regardless of the number of partners investing in the operation. This would mean that giant livestock corporations--such as Smithfield Foods and Tyson Foods--would be eligible for $300,000 in total rather than $300,000 per operation. However, if the Senate allows the appropriations bill to be sent to conference committee without a floor debate, the amendment won't be introduced.

"We support Senator Grassley's EQIP efforts as a step in the right direction to redirect conservation funding to help more family farmers, and limit the ability of large corporations to use the program as another form of corporate welfare," said George Naylor, Iowa farmer, member of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and President of the NFFC. "If our elected leaders really cared about this amendment, then they'd allow an open floor debate on agriculture appropriations; without the Grassley Amendment the EQIP program is just an outrageous use of taxpayer dollars to support giant, industrial livestock factories."

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) is the second largest conservation program in U.S. history. Under the 1996 farm bill EQIP was intended to help family farmers pay for practices that protect soil and water. The program worked reasonably well in support of farm conservation efforts, with a special emphasis on cost-effective land management practices. Payments were limited to $10,000 a year, with a cap of not more than $50,000 over five years. Animal waste storage structures for large-scale confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) were ineligible for EQIP funding. During the 2001-02 farm bill debate, family farm groups fought to ensure that this program remained in its original form, albeit with increased funding, to benefit family farmers rather than becoming a program of corporate welfare.

Once the final farm bill was passed, however, Congress caved in to the interests of industrial livestock corporations by reversing course and enabling large-scale confinement operations to become eligible for EQIP funding. The yearly payment limit was eliminated, and the overall payment limitation mushroomed nine-fold to $450,000 over the six-year span of the farm bill. Proponents of these changes spoke openly about converting EQIP from a conservation program to a program that used tax dollars to clean up after industrial livestock production.

The Corporate Research Project, which conducted the study, assists community, environmental and labor organizations in researching and analyzing companies and industries and their influence on public policy. It is a project of Good Jobs First, which is a Washington DC-based non-profit organization that helps grassroots groups and policy-makers ensure that economic development subsidies are accountable and effective.