December 10, 2001
 
 Dear Senator,
 
 We the undersigned organizations urge your support of an amendment to be
 offered by Senator Durbin to the farm bill.  The Durbin amendment would
 protect native prairie and other grasslands by denying farm commodity
 program and crop insurance subsidies on non-cropland converted to crop
 production.
 
 The amendment is a common sense extension of existing law withholding
 taxpayer support to those who "sodbust" highly erodible land.  The
 Durbin proposal would extend protection to all land without a crop
 production history, recognizing the important soil and wildlife benefits
 to be gained.  The amendment also would lessen incentives to increase
 production beyond levels supported by the market, reducing downward
 pressure on crop prices and farm income.
 
 The amendment is carefully crafted to cover land without a cropping
 history (not including land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program
 -- CRP) in at least one of the last five (or three of the past ten)
 years, while exempting land in long term rotations.  The exemption is
 important to ensure there are no unintended consequences for farms and
 ranches using environmentally sound, grass-based systems with
 occasional or sequenced cropping.
 
 The bill reported by the Senate Agriculture Committee takes the
 important step of denying CRP payments to landowners who retire land
 through CRP only to turn around and plow out new cropland on which to
 receive commodity program benefits and potential additional CRP
 contracts.  The Durbin amendment takes the logical additional step of
 ensuring that commodity and crop insurance benefits are not available on
 such ground.  By reducing conversions, the proposal would not only
 reduce over supply and low prices for farm commodities, but will also
 reduce soil erosion and protect important grasslands that serve as
 valuable ecosystems for a wide variety of plant and animal species.
 
 We believe the Durbin amendment makes farm programs more economically
 and environmentally sound, and we urge you to give it your full support.
 Thank you for considering our views.
 
 Sincerely,
 
 List of organizations