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Blue Grass (Eastern IA) | Post below about bringing more land into production got me thinking. Lets say someone had a 150 A HEL farm with 80 A in row crop and 70 A in permanent pasture in Iowa. If the farmer was to bring in heavy equipment to clear small brush, knock off the knobs, put in some tile, and build some basins, then no till into the sod to square up the field and gain 20 A would he be guilty of sod busting? Since the entire farm would be no till the soil loss should be under the allowable limit. Should he just do it and plead ignorance, or get the SWCD involved ? |
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SW Kansas | FSA said we were sod busting when we planted some wheat in a parcel we had sold years back. Owner planned on building a house, never did, wanted us to start farming it again rather than having it mowed. We were supposed to tear out wheat and not harvest it, did anyway. Oh well. Sure wish we could just leave the farm program, but it can be a help. |
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Gettysburg, PA | as I unerstand it, you are required to have a soil conservation plan on the field prior to planting any crop. I don't think the fact that you are no-tilling the crop has any bearing on the requirement to have the plan. Your plan though would most likely be pretty simple to develop since you are talking no-till. So, I guess I'd question why you would avoid doing things the right way? |
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Blue Grass (Eastern IA) | Beacause I don't know if it is a hard and fast rule that you cannot bring pasture into production. Or is it OK if you have an acceptable conservation plan. |
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| I have never had any trouble getting approval from the NRCS to break land, and much of it was HEL and some native sod. They would probably turn you down if you insisted on fall plowing HEL. They do allow small parcels (1 to 5 acres?) to be broken without approval, so I don't bother if we take out fences. |
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Gettysburg, PA | Gotcha. I don't think you can be told that you aren't allowed to farm it, just that you need a plan prior to doing it. I am not NRCS so I don't know all their rules, but, I've never heard of them telling you that you can't farm it, can't drain it, can't do it without a plan ahead of time, but, never that you can't farm it period. |
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| does this help answer your questions? http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/programs/compliance/helcindex.html http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/programs/compliance/ |
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Cambridge, southwestern Nebraska | You can farm whatever you want as long as you inform FSA prior to harvesting a crop. Then you just have to maintain a minimum amount of cover. No-till has allowed for some pretty rough ground to be farmed! |
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Blue Grass (Eastern IA) | That is good to know. Just a matter of being up front with the FSA.
Thanks to all |
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| I would think as long as you follow NRCS residue guidelines you should be ok unless for some reason the previous owner had that in CRP or something. Checking with them would be best though.
Sounds like you took the leap on that farm you were talking about earlier this fall. |
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Northwestern Minnesota | I will answer that question for you Because anytime you have the gov Boys or Girls out they will have to steal some land we have bought land and are told to have Them come and evaluate it, I go by the Dec 1985 rules if no HEL or wetlands on it and it has been farmed why would you want them out there ? I was told if i let them on my land they canmark anything that looks like a wetland We are all taught to comply from grade school and on not to question athority Well i will always question, Rember when anyone is telling you something are they telling you for your good or theirs? |
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| This is a great discussion about a subject that is very widely interpreted by NRCS personnel in various regions of the country and even counties within a state. Some NRCS people till say that land without a cropping history can't be farmed; but this is incorrect. Thanks for the poster who attached the interpretation of the actual rule. A plan should be done, true enough, but a potential grower should not be told that land can't be farmed unless it is under an existing contract. Even if a "mistake" is made, the grower has a grace period of one year to make corrections to fit the plan. |
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Anderson County Kansas | I have broke a couple thousand acres out of native sod in the last 10 to 15 years and haven't had any trouble. You need to have an approved conservation plan in place prior to planting a crop. In our area they consider no-till a plan by itself. In it isn't HEL after a determination you can farm it how you want. |
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Northeast Nebraska | we broke up 80 acres of pasture.
the conservation people made us agree to seed it do oats after we disked it 4 times. It worked excellent. We had a spring that really cooperated with us. We disked it all up and got it seed to oats. Came back 2 weeks later with the planted and planted corn into the 2" tall oats. Waited until oats was about 5" tall and hit it with RU. Best yield we had. 220 BPA dryland. dekalb 61-69 |
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Sumner GA, Located in southwest GA, | NRCS is a dirty word to me, FSA does not bring to mind happy thoughts either. |
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Corydon, IA | When I put some land in production it was a sodbust classification and before they would write a conservation plan they had to do a wetland determination. It was HEL land and the sodbust classification makes the conservation plan more strict than the rest of my farms. |
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Northwest Illinois | I think its interesting this conversation is taking place some 25 years after the law was passed. To me its simple, if you are going to take the taxpayers money then farm by the rules. |
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Michigan | I've broke ground that had not been farmed for 25 years. Never enrolled it in a farm program, never had a problem. Guess it depends what the ground cost you to start with. |
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| it is illegal to super sodbust but ok to regular sodbust as I recall. the difference I think is how fast or maybe it was how deep you set the moldboard plow. |
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Gettysburg, PA | So you've had a situation where NRCS says you can not farm ground? I just never heard that before? |
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E.Central MN | I thought the sodbuster rules were put in place for other than farmland uses. They already had the same type of rules in place in the farm program before that. Apparently I wasn't aware of what is allowed according to the posts above. |
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Sumner GA, Located in southwest GA, | Yes. Cleared up the edge of a field. According to them wetland, but it can more than easily be farmed, lots of sand washed in over the years. Of course, you cant drain, but they wanted the stumps left in place, couldn't do anything to make it farmable. Okay, what if we just grass it over, no stumps must be left in place. WHAT THE HE!! GOOD DOES THAT DO, ALL IT MAKES IS ONE BIG MESS, DONE BEEN THERE ONCE. No, that just ticked me off right there. Personally they could take the money and shove it in my opinion. I don't know what our problem is, but there is only ever a select few that ever get any of the monies out of the programs in our county, and I have pretty well given up. FSA isn't much better IMHO, and if the payments stopped tomorrow, wouldn't hurt my feelings. |
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Blue Grass (Eastern IA) | Just waiting on appraisal. No snags yet other than FSA deciding that I have been farming for 11 years. So no beginning farmer loan @1.5%. Will cost me $100,000 in interest over the life of the loan. All because I rented 8 A. back in the 90's. |
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sw corner ia. | you can do that, but you better not take any subsidy money for any other land. if they find out you have you will get to pay it all back. kind of a negative thing.. maybe where you are the rules are more relaxed than here. |
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Anderson County Kansas | I'm not sure what you are saying, but there are no rules that say you can't break up grass and get subsidies on other ground. The only rules say that there has to be a determination done on it and if there are wetlands you can't drain them, if its HEL you have to have an approved conservation plan in place prior to growing a crop, if its determined NHEL and no wetlands you can do whatever you want with it. The rules aren't different for different areas they are the same nationally. Believe me, if our local office could stop the native grass around here being farmed they would. It won't matter in a few more years all of it that can be farmed will be. |
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Gettysburg, PA | My guess on how that worked - Most wetland activities are regulated via permit except plowing or tilling. The process of "grubbing" the trees does not fall into that categry and you would have to apply for a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers for your proposed wetland disturbance. So, in essence, you weren't prevented from farming it, you were prevented from grubbing the trees and stumps out without permission. The end result was the same I guess, but, there is a distinct difference. |
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sw corner ia. | sorry, I was speaking of ground that was hel.. I should have just kept quiet. |
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SE SD | YOu just need to file an AD 1026 and ask permission to break Y land. They will bring it over to the nrcs to see if the land is HEL. If its HEL you work with the NRCS to do a conservation plan and say in compliance. Its not too tough. |
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Sumner GA, Located in southwest GA, | Regardless, NRCS is nothing but trouble for us. Put there nose into too much where they should butt out. |
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Corydon, IA | If you wanted to build a new shopping mall or housing development over those wetlands it would be a totally different circumstance. It would probably be just fine. |
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| The proposed mall developer next to my farm at Ames and his engineers didn't believe the amount of water they are going to see in the spring. The want to replace a smooth clay tile mutual main with corrugated tile which will back up the water even more than the undersized main does now. But whether their ground is wetland, cropped wetland, has standing water half the summer or is a COE flood plain, they can chop it all up and build. Local ordnance may require them to plan for surface water catch basins but only for their paved and built over areas. Not for the 1600 acres that drain onto their patch.
But since they aren't going to apply for farm program payments, they could enlarge that main (dating from 1907) with running afoul of the swampbuster law. Grump.
Gerald J. |
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Anyone get busted for sodbusting?
