[PCA] NEWS: Land Once Preserved Now Being Farmed

[Olivia Kwong]

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/03/31/land-once-preserved-now-being-farmed.html

Land Once Preserved Now Being Farmed
With crop prices at record highs, an important farmland conservation 
program is being threatened
By Kent Garber
Posted March 31, 2008

Since the mid-1980s, the U.S. government, in an attempt to reduce the 
environmental fallout from large-scale farming, has been paying farmers to 
set aside less-than-ideal land for conservation. The results have been 
overwhelmingly positive: Soil erosion has been reduced; chemical and 
fertilizer runoff has eased; habitats for game birds and endangered 
species have been created and enlarged. The pushback to climate change has 
been equally noteworthy: In 2007, the lands trapped 50 million metric tons 
of carbon dioxide, making the Conservation Reserve Program the most 
effective government-funded defense against greenhouse gases on private 
lands.

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