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Growing Profits with Restoration. Looking to literally save the farm,
rural landowners find profit in their new careers as stewards of the earth.

FX: walking through grass, birds, wind
[LIAM] Dan Bauermeister is walking part of his 5-thousand-acre wheat farm on the dry, gently-folded plains of Franklin County in south-eastern Washington. The morning sun is warming the early spring air and meadowlarks call to each other across the prairie. Bauermeister holds a chewed-up stem of sage.

[BAUERMEISTER]: Gophers eating my sagebrush ...

FX: crossfade walking to standing sounds, under ...)
[LIAM] He's inspecting a portion of his farm he's returning to its natural state. Under a federal conservation program, he's planted several varieties of native grasses and shrubs and has agreed to keep it that way for at least 10 years. Restoring the land to its original condition reduces water and air pollution caused by erosion and runoff and provides habitat for native wildlife. Bauermeister appreciates those environmental goals, but his motivation is simpler.

[BAUERMEISTER] Hard-core economics, this'll pay me much better than the wheat I'm gonna get off this kind of ground, this is poor ground.

[LIAM] The government pays Bauermeister 50 dollars a year for each of the 800 acres he's restoring. That's comparable to what he'd earn on all but his best wheat-producing acreage. And as farm income drops across the country, Bauermeister has plenty of company. Over the past 15 years, farmers have taken millions of acres out of crop production and restored it. That's been good news for the environment. The Department of Agriculture says conservation programs have reduced erosion by one-third, restored nearly a million acres of wetlands, improved wildlife habitat and soaked up millions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere. Farmers have benefited, too, using the programs as reliable income in an otherwise risky business. For some, conservation payments are all that stand between them and losing their land. But wheat farmer Chris Herron says even though the programs have helped him, the effect on the local communityhasn't been as good.

[HERRON] As the ground comes out of production, there's less combines to purchase to harvest, there's less wheat trucks to buy, there's less of a labor pool that needs to be hired for harvest ... We used to have a tractor dealer and an equipment repair shop in my hometown of Connell. We used to have two grocery stores and a hardware store. We don't have any of that anymore.

[LIAM] Demand for conservation programs is booming. For every farmer who signs up, another is turned away for lack of funds. But not everyone who supports conservation thinks retiring cropland is the best way to do it. Read Smith is president of the National Association of Conservation Districts. He wants to see more emphasis on programs that help farmers make environmental improvements on their working land rather than take it out of production.

[SMITH] We can develop a program and keep producing the safest and most abundant food source on the earth and at the same time yield the public clean water, clean air and all these other environmental benefits.

[LIAM] Smith says continued focus on removing farmland from production will worsen the decline of farm communities. Meanwhile -- in Washington D-C -- wrangling over the next five-year farm bill is well under way, and a growing coalition of farmers and environmentalists is lobbying congress to allocate billions more for conservation. Although President George Bush has voiced support for voluntary, incentive-based programs, his administration is talking about deep cuts in several of them. Ultimately, politics is king and most voters don't live on farms. Whether the shift toward conservation in farm country flourishes or dies on the vine will depend largely on whether environmentally-minded Americans see value in spending their tax dollars to buy clean air and water from their farmers. For Restoration Radio, I'm Liam Moriarty.

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