Twenty years ago the California rice industry stepped out of our traditional comfort zone and invited Marc Reisner to see Sacramento Valley ricelands. Potentially, not the best career move for my colleague Bob Herkert. In fact, I don’t think he told anyone, in case the field trip didn’t go well. You can imagine the tension, as he called the author of the most provocative book on water and the West and invited him to see firsthand the crop he labeled as “a monsoon crop grown in a dessert.” Certainly the future for agricultural and environmental relationships was a dim prospect.
The fights 20 years ago were about the control of resources, in Marc’s case – water. Environmental groups saw themselves as the citizen standing in front of the agriculture “tank” that devastated the landscape. Agriculture saw concerns about species, pollution and resource use as an assault to their very livelihood and even their identity. The accusations were felt at a deeply personal level.
Following these early skirmishes, a number of conservation organizations employed less conflict-generating approaches and set out to purchase agricultural lands to protect them for future generations. The decades that followed saw huge cattle ranches purchased, riparian habitat secured and marginal agricultural lands converted into wetlands. While the exact figure is not published, it is almost certain that upwards of several million acres have been purchased over time in California for protection by dozens of conservation groups and conservancies.
In all honesty, most farmers saw this as only a slightly better option than being told they were the scourges of the earth. There is never a lot of trust for an out of town neighbor. Ask anyone who has married into a farm family and moved to a rural community and they will tell you it can take a lifetime to finally be accepted.
Not surprisingly, these new landowners discovered the same thing landlords have know for generations – it costs a lot of money to keep up property. Especially when it’s not generating much income.
Today a new model is taking hold. One that is far more palatable to farmers and far more workable for conservation groups. The concept gaining ground today is one of agricultural lands producing crops while being managed at the same time to the benefit of wildlife, water quality and even air quality. This dual use – working agricultural lands producing crops and income while also providing wildlife habitat and open space – meets both conservation groups’ needs as well as addressing agriculture’s needs. Turns out both are financial.
For the last three years, California Rice has been partnering with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and some new conservation partners like Audubon, PRBO Conservation Sciences and renewing relationships with The Nature Conservancy to develop a working lands program for rice. Sound science on the needs of shorebirds and other waterbirds combined with doable practices in a rice field are beginning to yield promising results. The Waterbird Habitat Enhancement Program, or WHEP, is in my mind the future of conservation programs. The conservation groups get the habitat they need without having to buy, restore and maintain land and farmers get reasonable payment for the environment services they provide. The question is can they be successful? Well, in two years over 100,000 acres of rice have signed up and over $9 million contracted. This is for a 100 percent voluntary program.
Twenty years ago a daring colleague took that first step that opened a dialogue with someone we would never talk to given a choice. Today we are sitting down with NRCS and conservation groups to take a fresh look at existing farm bill conservation programs. As a result, NRCS has worked with rice and these bird conservation groups to roll out WHEP in a manner that works well for the environment and our farmers. We not only welcome the dialogue, we welcome the biologists on to our farms to evaluate the effectiveness of the new things we are doing on our fields for diminutive species of shorebirds. Just like the conversation with Marc Reisner decades ago, reasonable people who are honest are able to find common ground, in our case 500,000 acres of it. If this isn’t a bright future for collaborative agriculture and environmental partnerships, I’m not sure you’ll ever find one.
Tim Johnson, CRC President & CEO
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