The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 encourages environmental organizations, land trusts, and state policymakers to chase billions of dollars earmarked for “conservation” and conservation easements.
Under the language of the 2018 Farm Bill, farmers and ranchers were provided with practical and specific incentives to manage their land in sound and proven methods. However, the Inflation Reduction Act changed the purpose to mitigate and address climate change through reducing cow flatulence, greenhouse gas emissions, and controlling agricultural production.
One of the key changes made by the IRA was to the ACEP federal conservation easement program funded by the USDA-NRCS. The original purpose for the easements were to “protect the agricultural use and future viability, and … protect grazing uses and related conservation values by restoring or conserving eligible land.”
Under the new IRA language, the name stayed the same, but the purpose fundamentally changed. Now instead of “protecting agriculture,” the new requirement is to “prioritize projects and activities that mitigate or address climate change through the management of agricultural production, including by reducing or avoiding greenhouse gas emissions.”
Proponents of this language believe agriculture is causing climate change; therefore, agriculture production needs to be controlled to mitigate the crisis, hence the reason for this new language.
For land trusts, states, and landowners to access these funds for ACEP, they must secure matching grants, in this case 50% of the costs. For other federal conservation easement programs like the Forest Legacy Program, the federal government provides 75% of the funds requiring a 25% matching grant.
Environmentalists realize they cannot access this windfall from the IRA, nor get effective control of agriculture production on private lands without the required matching funds. Their solution has been to get states to write the check.
Texas state Rep. Justin Holland introduced HB 3165, creating a $2 billion slush fund from Texas’ Rainy-Day Funds to acquire farm, ranch, and forest lands in Texas. The money was to be pooled into the “Land and Water Conservation Fund”, whose purpose was to grant millions of dollars to environmental organizations and land trusts to buy conservation easements. Texas would have become a state encumbered by easements that delegated management authority to an NGO or a state agency.
HB 3165 passed out of the House but was killed in the Senate when American Stewards for Liberty convinced the Senate sponsor to withdraw the bill.
In Kansas, HB 2541 creates the “Working Lands Conservation Fund” to “promote conservation…through irrigation efficiency, grazing rotation and management, soil health practices,” and others.
ASL provided testimony that HB 2541 included “long-term land protection from conversion or loss of habitat, biodiversity, sustainable and regenerative timber management, and ecological restoration.”
These “terms” set off alarms because of the combination of the Biden administration’s attempt to lock up 30 percent of our nation’s lands and waters by 2030. HB 2541 prioritizes the “capture” of “federal, private or other nonstate matching moneys” to purchase conservation easements. It also specifically states in Sec. 2, (e) “nonprofit entities shall be eligible to receive funding from the grant program” giving them government grants to place conservation easements on private property.
So many landowners appeared in protest that the chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources said he would not let a vote occur on the bill.
In Tennessee, HB 1890 specifically creates the “Farmland Preservation Fund” to allow Tennessee’s Commissioner of Agriculture to acquire “agricultural easements” that “imposes limitations or affirmative obligations on the owner of the servient estate, the owner’s heir, and assigns with respect to the use and management of the servient land, structures or features thereon…”
“Servient” is the key word. Under a conservation easement, the landowner conveys his development rights to a third party, normally a land trust, and legally he becomes the “servient” owner of the land. The land trust becomes the “dominant” owner because he owns control of how the land will be used — known as the “conservation purpose.”
Stop 30×30 in Your State
All these states and pieces of legislation are chasing the federal dollars now being doled out by the Inflation Reduction Act. Research your state legislation to see what “conservation” legislation has been filed.
Few are aware the language of the IRA changed the purpose for these programs. However, by taking the federal dollars under the IRA, states will unwittingly be assisting the Biden administration’s 30×30 program in prioritizing the control of agriculture production instead of truly helping farmers and ranchers.