USDA releases CRP land for feed production

You can tell the campaign season is on his hot and heavy, when the looney government attempts to look like they're doing something about the nation's problems, start to come out. Motion is more imporant than actual help or a well thought-out plan.

Because livestock producers are complaining about the high cost of grain to feed their animals, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is going to allow land to be taken out of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to raise feed for livestock. To the untrained eye this may look like a real solution. It's anything but.

In the first place, no good crop land is in the CRP. It is a well known fact that landowners take the least productive land they own and put it in CRP. Only if the land is so poor it can't be leased to someone for more than the CRP payment amount, or it slopes and can't be irrigated, or it has bad alkalai soil or a severe infestation of weeds or bugs--then it is put in CRP.

No great amount of feed, certainly not enough to bring relief from high grain prices, can be raised on CRP land. The good productive land is already in production, raising grain to sell at the current high prices.

Secondly, it is the same fallacy as releasing oil from the nation's petroleum reserve to bring down high gas prices. There's about enough oil in the reserve to last a week or so, at the rate Americans burn up oil. That won't affect the oil market one whit.

So it is with feed from CRP land. Mark my words: USDA's action today won't drive down the Chicago Board of Trade grain futures contracts tomorrow. Nobody that really knows how agriculture works is intimidated. This is a farce.