In a Q & A with Dennis Anderson (Sports, Aug. 3), David Nomsen, vice president of government affairs for Pheasants Forever, decried the fact that Conservation Reserve Program payments had not kept up with the cost of the $200 per acre land rent. He worried that agriculture producers would be taking their land out of the program and putting it back into production and what would the hunters do then?
Coming out of the environmentally devastating 1930s, people had a renewed sense of conservation and the sense that land was a special trust. If you farmed it, you also had an obligation to care for it so that it would be there for succeeding generations. During the past 50 years, however, we have drifted back to something akin to medieval times where we have a landed aristocracy who think they can use land any way they wish, even use it up.
We need to get away from this CRP boondoggle madness where wealthy farm producers pick out land that is the least productive of a plot and we pay them not to farm it on the assumption that it is environmentally fragile, erodible land. There is nothing to stop them from double dipping and also leasing the land out to hunters. What we should do instead is to identify those lands that should not be put under plow and arrest those who would damage the environment.
BRYAN D. EMMEL, MOORHEAD, MINN.
