Selected Articles from the LAND Newsletter
President's Report - Attending Meetings
By Don Berge, LAND President
What you don’t know doesn’t always hurt you. No doubt everyone has heard this from time to time, but knowledge brings power. Too frequently we become complacent and allow others to provide our information.
Included in our February newsletter was an insert that requested comments and/or questions concerning the Conservation Security Program (CSP). Hopefully we’ve all taken the time to submit them to NRCS. If you haven’t completed the form, please do so now and make duplicate copies. Forms are available at the LAND Web site: www.ndland.org. Take the duplicates and send, or better yet, deliver the forms to our Congressional delegation and the Governor’s office. Our representatives need to know what our attitudes are concerning CSP and how this program will impact us as property owners. Condensed versions and interpretations by others are no longer acceptable. Our Governor and the Congressional delegation can’t be expected to realize these impacts on property if the only information is supplied by those whose only purpose is to gain control of our rights in the name of conservation (whatever that means).
My concern arises from my attendance on January 22, 2004 at the only NRCS hearing for farmers, ranchers, landowners and farm organizations. Only LAND, ND Farm Bureau (NDFB) and one farmer were present (other than “conservation” agencies). The NDFB objected only to the provision that land unplanted four out of six years did not qualify for CSP. The farmer pleaded that NRCS not allow this program to become so devastating to rural communities like CRP. In addition, the Endangered Species Act was of particular concern to this farmer. LAND objected to many provisions, however, our government’s partnering with non-profit (?) organizations and the denial of timely appeal to a third part are the most disturbing to me. The Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited are two of several outside organizations that could case less about the future of our state and property rights. The current appeal process is designed to delay and discourage complaints since NRCS knows their success rate in other avenues is not good.
Finally, the lack of participation by lending institutions, commodity organizations, other farm organizations and our elected officials at the ONLY hearing makes me question their concern and respect for property owners. PLEASE submit your comments to all parties in question because we positively know that many aspects of CSP can hurt property rights. There’s still time to get involved.
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