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quality” and permanently protect the country’s strategic farmland.
AFT a national farmland conservation group based in Washington, said tis proposed policy would:
• Protect the nation’s best, unique and most productive farmland from suburban sprawl; ' • Minimize agriculture’s impact on environmentally sensitive lands; and
• Promote an efficient and environmentally sound agriculture system that enhances farm productivity and conserves national resources.
The group said its farm bill proposals are designed to reduce risk to farm incomes, the environment and future agricultural capability and miximize the benefits to society.
“The public increasingly believes it is no longer enough that the nation’s farmers produce a higher quality. more abundant and less costly food supply than any other farmers in the world,” observed AFT President Ralph Grossi, a third-generation rancher from northern California.
“Today, farmers are expected to produce other producets—such things as scenic open space, wildlife habitat, wetlands, watershed protection—that they certainly can provide if they afe given the incentives to do so. By compensating farmers for the environmental products taxpayers want, we can capitalize on the changing expectations of American society and create a public-private partnership that enhances both environemtanl quality and farm economics.”
AFT said is had keyed its farm bill recommendations to the type of farmland—strategic, environmentally sensitive, and all other—and the environmental products they produce. It indicated sufficient savings from existing programs would be generated to fund its proposals.
AFT recommended some incentives go to states to permanently protect farmland through the Farms for the Future Act. AFT said strategic farmland had unique or special value for the production of food and
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