With grocery prices up nearly 6 percent over the past year, it might seem odd that the federal government is paying farmers a fortune to not grow food.

Odd but true. The government last year paid $1.8 billion to farmers for agreeing to not plant crops or graze herds on 36 million acres of land — an area bigger than Arkansas. That includes 1.6 million acres in Missouri and another million in Illinois.

Stranger still: As food prices rise, the government still insists that farmers not grow crops, even though some farmers are pleading to be allowed to plant.

The guiding policy is called the Conservation Reserve Program. It was born in the 1980s, when crop surpluses were driving down prices and hurting farmers. The situation now is reversed, but the program remains unchanged.

These days, it’s grocery shoppers and food processors who are feeling the pain. The reserve program is under attack from the food and livestock industries, which would love to pay less for the grain that goes into food for both human beings and animals.

How much difference would it make to put some of those 36 million reserved acres back into production? Perhaps not much. The program is aimed at marginal farmland, along with sensitive acres near streams — wetlands and the like. Once idled, the land is planted in prairie grass or trees to hold the soil. Since it isn’t plowed or fertilized, there’s less erosion and chemical run-off.

The program serves a useful purpose in safeguarding wildlife and water quality and limiting soil erosion. Farmers volunteer for the program and rarely put their most productive acreage in it.

On the other hand, those reserve acres make dandy habitat for deer, so the Department of Agriculture sometimes finds itself paying wealthy “farmers” to keep up their hunting preserves. The department also pays absentee owners who wouldn’t farm the land anyway.

Once land goes into the program, it has to stay there for 10 to 15 years. There is, as they say, a substantial penalty for early withdrawal. But with some crop prices up 40 percent to 80 percent in the last year, a lot of money could be made planting that marginal land.

Bill Roenigk, vice president of the National Chicken Council, says 7 million or 8 million acres would go back into production if the government waived the penalties.

Chicken feed prices are triple what they were two years ago, he says. By this fall, that could translate into a 25 percent jump in the supermarket price for chicken, he says.

Environmental groups make a different calculation: More farming equals more pollution and less wildlife. Any effect on food prices would be tiny, says Julie Sibbing, program manager at the National Wildlife Foundation. “It’s not feeding the hungry. It’s feeding animals and ethanol plants,” she says. “So much of the Midwest is agricultural. There has to be some place where wildlife can survive.”

This calls for some Solomonic decision making at the Agriculture Department. The best way to lower prices is to increase supply. So the department should allow some good farm land out of the program without penalty. But the department should protect the land near streams and other ecologically sensitive areas, whether it’s good farm land or not.

The more difficult question involves the government mandate for use of ethanol in gasoline and its effect on food and fuel prices. The New York Times reported this week that Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has several key staffers and top campaign supporters with strong ties to the ethanol industry. On the other hand, Mr. Obama’s Republican adversary, Sen. John McCain of Arizona is a longtime critic of the special subsidies granted to the corn ethanol industry.

Expect ethanol, gas prices and food prices to play a big part in the fall
campaign.