(last in a series on farm policy)

Few people dispute that the farm bill needs fixing.

Finding solutions to satisfy all interests and areas of the country are other matters, according to policy makers and people connected to agriculture.

"The idea of rewarding farmers for good environmental practices on their land is the way of the future," said Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn. "I also believe that it is absolutely essential that we get some competition back into the free enterprise system."

Members of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non-profit activist agency, agree.

The solution rests in paying for conservation on working land, providing risk management tools to help farmers with riskier aspects of farming, such as price swings and weather, and negotiating free trade agreements, said Anne Keys, EWG's vice president for policy.

"What we're saying, and the administration is saying and a lot of people are saying is look, conservation payments are the way to go," Keys said. "There's less market distorting, they don't distort trade, taxpayers get the benefit of a cleaner environment and farmers will better steward the land."

Not only should farmers receive payment for conservation measures on working land, highly erodible terrain should be excluded from subsidy payments and eligible only for conservation land retirement programs, said Neal Eash, assistant professor of agronomy at Southwest State University in Marshall.

"We ought to take our prime farm land, good flat land, and farm the living daylights out of it," Eash said. "And then the rest of the stuff, there's a lot of land that should never be farmed."

Paying farmers not to till land could offset the loss of subsidy payments for lower yields resulting from this method of land management, which in turn would help decrease surpluses, Eash said. Additionally, payments could be tiered for planting cover crops in winter and adding one or more additional rotation crops.

However, Swift County farmer Shawn Bonk said no-till methods work better in some parts of the country than in others.

"We're too far north," Bonk said. "It's too cold, and it doesn't warm up fast enough in the spring. It works really well, I think, in Iowa and out there in the Dakotas where it's dryer, but it doesn't seem to work in Minnesota."

Cottonwood County farmer Willard Dick sees conservation payments as one way to get farmers to do things they might otherwise disregard.

"Basically, farmers are conservationists, but there are places where they will cut corners," Dick said. "And sometimes, with the CRP program, you can help along this business a little bit by encouraging them to have filter strips along a stream or along rivers, and that's a good thing."

However, eligibility rules for these and other payments need reworking so that money goes only to people engaged in farming and not to those who simply own the land, Dick said.

"I don't think that the government program should be aimed at welfare for the rich," Dick said.

Methods of targeting land for conservation also need attention, said Brown County farmer Jeffrey S. Schultz. For instance, a quarter of his fathers' prime farmland was accepted in the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, regardless of high annual yields, he said. His father later decided against retiring the land.

Schultz also favors higher loan rates, doing away with loan deficiency payments and setting acres aside.

"If we have such a surplus, let's stop producing," Schultz said.

Favorable weather and the increased use of environmentally friendly, genetically enhanced technology primarily caused increased production, said Chippewa County farmer Kent Bosch. The inflated value of the dollar and government's lack of follow-through with trade, research and promotion pieces of the farm law -- and to a lesser extent increased production -- caused low commodity prices, he said.

Loan deficiency payments -- the only safety net now in place for farmers -- caused higher subsidies, and rising acres of rental, rather than owner-operated farm land has far more to do with aging demographics and tax policy that discourages title transfers to younger farmers than it does with farm policy, Bosch said.

"It seems to me that the consolidation in agriculture will continue just as it has since the beginning of time," Bosch said. "The things that will help farmers through this, regardless of what our next farm bill looks like, is an understanding of economics and the technological 'genetic' revolution that is taking place.

"Applying sound economics and accepting and adopting technology are the keys to making U.S. farmers the most environmentally friendly, efficient, lowest-cost producers of food, fiber, and fuel in the world."

With its 14 inches of black topsoil, 17 Midwestern states control the world's food supply, said retired Redwood County farmer Bob Starr. Grain farmers should be involved in and get paid for strategic reserves, rather than "this senseless shipping overseas of commodities that make our friends and neighbors worldwide mad because we try to undersell them," Starr said.

Farmers need to wean themselves from government programs and bargain collectively for the products they produce, said Yellow Medicine County farmer Gary Velde.

"They need to put a price on it that reflects the cost of production plus a reasonable profit," Velde said.

News media do an injustice by leading society to believe that farmers are divided in what they need, said Yellow Medicine Farmer Bob Arndt, state president of the Minnesota Farm Organization.

"We may be divided in what we want, but not in what we need," Arndt said. "When it comes to what we need, we all want a fair price and a fair chance to get that price out of a marketing system."

Agriculture is divided into three segments: agribusiness, agri-industry and production agriculture, Arndt said. Agri-industry and production sit at opposite ends of the spectrum and cannot successfully sit under one roof, he said.

"Right now, the attitude of our government, the attitude of our whole society is that bigger is better, private enterprise is something of the past and corporate investment is the best way to go," Arndt said. "But they don't realize that it is drying up the small towns, it's taken the incentive away from the producer out here who no longer owns the land and is working for a wage, and in the long run it's going to create a very expensive food supply on everybody's table.

"We have to get our whole social society in America to understand that if we're going to stop this transition in agriculture from private enterprise to corporate ownership, we're going to have to put lots of ideas and minds together."

Arndt recommends increasing the support price for corn and soybeans and removing some land from production.

"If we would set aside seven to 10 percent of the corn acres and soy bean acres, the market would take over," Arndt said. "The market would increase in value to a point where farmers could receive the cost of production plus a reasonable profit."

U.S. agriculture must decide if it is going to compete on an international basis, said Bryan Edwardson, director of public policy for Cargill, Inc.

"There's basically just two choices," Edwardson said. "It's either compete, or try and keep the competition out. This is what's at the heart."

Edwardson suggested legislators replace price supports with direct payments across the board and adopt a loan program that reflects and moves with market prices.

"Right now, people plant what's guaranteed to pay," Edwardson said. "Under direct payments, the market would dictate what gets planted. Right now, the government programs dictate.

"Direct payments would make our job as a grain buyer a lot harder because people would actually be buying and selling according to what the market would bear. It's a much scarier world, and there are a lot fewer guarantees and a lot less help. The price would be more volatile."

Missing from farm policy debate is how to help rural communities thrive, Edwardson said. Fewer farms exist today and fewer remaining farmers make their sole living from farming, yet discussion by the legislature is limited regarding ramifications of proposed policies and how to bolster rural communities.

"Discussion about how to get people to go and stay in rural America is needed," Edwardson said. "As a company, we look around, and a lot of the small towns that we're still in, we literally are about the only real big investor left."

In addition to ensuring that the farm bill does not by policy direct what producers grow, legislators need to address whether the country wants a social or a business farm policy, said Allen Anderson, vice president of governmental affairs for Cenex Harvest States.

"Europe has decided it wants a social program that keeps small farmers on the land," Anderson said. "I don't think our farm policies, going back, have done that, and I don't know that they've really been designed to. The real issue is what does farm policy need to focus at. It is not an easy answer."