Farmers, enviros alarmed by USDA’s new wetlands rules

The Natural Resources Conservation Service is likely to receive a decidedly mixed bag of comments on a rule it issued last month that seeks to clarify when producers have wetlands on their farms. Wetland advocates are concerned that NRCS is trying to weaken its highly erodible land protections by allowing faulty maps to be used to determine whether wetlands exist on the landscape. Enacted in the 1985 farm bill, the so-called "Swampbuster" language prohibits farmers who have converted wetlands to cropland from receiving USDA program benefits.The American Farm Bureau Federation, on the other hand, is worried NRCS may be giving itself too much leeway to determine when wetlands exist on the landscape.For its part, NRCS says it is simply trying to make everything clearer for producers trying to figure out what’s on their lands.