Swampbusting 



Wetland Conversion and Farm Programs 



Ralph E. Heimlich and Linda L. Langner* 



Introduction 



Public concern with the environment has forced a 

 reevaluation of our attitudes toward wetlands, those 

 frontiers between land and water where so much 

 wildlife finds a home and fisheries are nurtured. 

 Utilitarian views of wetlands — as latent resources 

 awaiting reclamation for "useful" purposes — 

 conflict with environmental concerns about loss of 

 wetland habitat. Agriculture has been an important 

 element in wetland conversion: about 87 percent of 

 recent wetland losses involved draining and clear- 

 ing wetlands for farming (28).* 



Development of farmland in response to higher 

 commodity prices in the 1970's was responsible for 

 faster conversion of wetlands. Inconsistency be- 

 tween agricultural production goals and conserva- 

 tion goals was a persistent theme in public 

 meetings and in a public opinion poll conducted in 

 conjunction with the 1980 Resource Conservation 

 Assessment [12). Even though official USDA policy 

 seeks to "minimize the destruction, loss or degrada- 

 tion of wetlands. . ." (Executive Order 11990), 

 Government price-support and credit programs are 

 presumed to be an important incentive in private 

 decisions to convert land for farming. Provisions in 

 the 1985 farm act deny farm program benefits both 

 to operators who plow up highly erodible land, a 

 practice termed "sodbusting," and operators who 

 grow annual crops on converted wetlands, called 

 "swampbusting" (17). Critics argue that farm pro- 

 grams should not support cropland converted from 

 wetlands when the Water Bank Program and other 

 Federal wildlife habitat programs seek to preserve 

 wetlands. 



Laws directly and indirectly regulating wetland 

 conversions exist at the Federal level and in 30 



*The authors are agricultural economists with the U.S. Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Natural 

 Resource Economics Division, Washington, D.C. 



'Italicized numbers in parentheses refer to sources cited in 

 the References section. 



States. Under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, 

 the Army Corps of Engineers regulates the 

 discharge of dredged or filled material onto 

 wetlands. However, excavation, drainage, clearing, 

 and flooding of wetlands are not explicitly covered, 

 so many inland conversions do not require a 404 

 permit. The Office of Technology Assessment 

 (OTA) found that of the 300,000 acres of wetlands 

 converted annually, more than 80 percent were 

 unregulated. Corps estimates for 1980-81 indicate 

 that of all permits filed, about half the acreage was 

 approved for conversion with no significant 

 modification. The 404 program and State regulatory 

 programs are most effective at preventing coastal 

 wetland conversion, while inland wetlands most 

 vulnerable to agricultural conversion are not effec- 

 tively regulated [28). 



To address this problem, legislation was introduced 

 in the 99th Congress to deny farm program benefits 

 to operators who convert wetlands for crop produc- 

 tion. The wetland conservation provision (Title XII 

 C.) of the Food Security Act of 1985 (P.L. 99-198) 

 makes an operator ineligible for price-support . 

 payments, farm storage facility loans, crop in- 

 surance, disaster payments, and insured or 

 guaranteed loans for any year in which an annual 

 crop was produced on converted wetlands. Ari^^ 

 operator would retain eligibility if AeJandwer^ 

 converted before enactment of the legislation, or i|^ 

 crop produc^pn^vyece, possible JnJtheweUand^^ 

 natural state or due to natural conditions suck'^ 

 drougm. Wetlands are defined as "land that has a 

 predominance of hydric soils and that is inundated 

 or saturated by surface or ground water at a fre- 

 quency and duration sufficient to support ... a 

 prevalence of hydrophytic vegetation typically 

 adapted for life in saturated soil conditions" (P.L. 

 99-198). 



This report investigates the implications of the 

 swampbuster provision by presenting data on re- 

 maining wetlands and analyzing their potential for 

 conversion to farmland. Background on past losses 



