A federal program intended to protect America’s grasslands may be encouraging wildfires that spoil them, a member of the Senate committee that writes farm policy said Wednesday.
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) blamed the Conservation Reserve Program in part for fires that have raged through his state’s ranchlands. At a Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee hearing, he asked Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to support efforts to ease the program’s restrictions on grazing.
Moran and other senators are looking to give farmers more flexibility to put cattle on CRP acres, normally set aside for 10-year periods in which they can’t be harvested or grazed. The Agriculture Department pays farmers to enroll.
The CRP program can give agricultural land time to recover from heavy use, to provide wildlife habitat and to take marginal-quality land out of production.
