By Martha M. Ireland

Column from July 27, 2001 -- Peninsula Daily News        

"You got your hay in?" Sequim resident Betty Ceike puzzled. "What does that mean?"

I explained that Jim Beam mows and bales people's fields. Jim gets paid for his work by selling the hay to livestock owners. Twelve one-ton-flatbed loads equals about 600 bales, which fills our barn. Thank God it's done for 2001.

"Now what will you two do to keep occupied?" Betty asked innocently.

Another day, Connie Hyatt, who's researching sustainable agriculture for the League of Women Voters, came asking, "What public policy decisions affect agriculture?" She correctly guessed that environmental regulations top the list.

Agriculture and environmental enhancement are natural allies that are tragically being turned into enemies. Consider the Klamath Basin confrontation. Adequately irrigating those farms requires less than five percent of the available water and benefits the entire ecosystem. Instead, the Endangered Species Act was used as a weapon to turn the basin into a wasteland.

Locally, consider 40 acres of Dungeness farmland that was leased as dry pasture for 20 years. Objections to cows in Matriotti Creek impelled the owners to lease to an alfalfa farmer instead.

Land-use regulators then negotiated a creek-side buffer. The owners agreed to 35 feet to shade the less-than-10-foot-wide stream. The amended Critical Areas Code now demands 75 feet.

A regulator blithely suggested that the owners voluntarily make it 150 feet. Displaying a drawing of the property bisected by a 310-foot-wide field-shading corridor of Douglas Fir, the regulator couldn't comprehend why they weren't eager to surrender half their parcel and diminish the growing capacity of the remainder.

One farm bill now before Congress emphasizes conservation, including doubling acreage in the Wetland Reserve Program. It also offers a $25-million-per-year Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program and a $50-million-a-year Farmland Protection Program, each set to run for 10 years.

The latter could help non-profit groups, such as our local Friends of the Fields, to acquire conservation easements and development rights.

"Three-quarters of Americans think that federal farm payments should come with some conservation requirement on the part of the farmer," reports the American Farmland Trust, which joins the National Farm Union in calling for even more conservation-targeted farm spending.

While the conservation farm bill sounds intriguing, federal land management bureaus are increasingly adopting management plans that are incompatible with agriculture.

In addition to environmental and land use regulations, agriculture is also affected--often negatively--by tax, labor, trade, immigration, foreign relation, and economic policies.

Agriculture is in trouble everywhere. "Farm Unrest Roils Mexico," headlined a July 22 New York Times article. "Peasants taking to the streets to protest the forces they say undermine their way of life are pushing Mexico's agricultural industry to the point of civil unrest," the Times reported.

Worldwide, a shrinking minority has first-hand knowledge about agriculture. Ranchers don't write the rules for urban development, but urbanites--people so far removed from the farm that they can't even begin to imagine how farmers fill their days--do write the rules for ranching.

I explained to Betty that I was joking when I said, having got the year's hay in, we were just lolling around--but there wasn't time enough to fully answer her question. My husband, Dale, is irrigating, tractoring, and much more. I'm forever weeding and pruning. I call it gathering greens for our chickens.