page_85 < previous page page_85 next page > Page 85 Soil erosion The combination of events that drew nationwide attention to soil erosion in the 1930s contributed to the creation of the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) in 1935. Over the next several decades, SCS provided technical assistance to farmers through a variety of programs aimed at reducing soil erosion, restoring soil productivity, and conserving water on the land (Heimlich 1991). The Soil Bank Program, established in 1956, paid farmers to establish protective cover on land taken out of crop production to reduce commodity inventories. At the peak of the program, in 196061, there were nearly 29 million acres under contract (Laycock 1991). By 1969, after most contracts had expired, only 20 percent of the land enrolled in the Soil Bank Program stayed in permanent vegetative cover (Myers 1991). A perceived global food crisis, strong export demand, and rising commodity prices beginning in the early 1970s led to the conversion of over 20 million acres to cropland between 1975 and 1981 (Heimlich 1986). Annual cropland retirement programs were suspended in 1973 (Berg 1994). Rising concern over the potential environmental consequences of this increase in cultivated area combined with growing commodity surpluses in the early 1980s to motivate another shift in soil conservation policy. By 1983, cropland idled under the acreage reduction requirements of annual federal commodity programs had increased from zero to 78 million acres (Heimlich 1991; U.S. Department of Agriculture 1992a). Desire for longer-term action eventually led to the sodbuster and conservation compliance provisions of the 1985 Farm Bill, which restricted the conversion and cultivation of highly erodable land and also established the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), through which over 36 million acres of cropland have been retired from crop production for ten-year periods and placed in protective cover of grasses or trees (Osborn 1994; see Map 5.2). Wetlands It is only in recent decades that the beneficial functions of wetlandssuch as water-quality improvement, floodwater retention, groundwater replenishment, fish and wildlife habitat, and recreationhave come to be appreciated. The problem for policymakers is that these benefits are primarily public in nature, whereas an estimated 75 percent of remaining wetlands are privately owned (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 1993). Thus, short of outright public acquisition of wetlands, protection of wetlands and their benefits requires land-use regulation and/or incentives to guide private decision-making. The shift in attitudes toward wetlands preservation has resulted in the gradual reversal of federal wetlands policy in recent decades, including the  < previous page page_85 next page >