U.S. CONGRESS TO LOOK AT SOIL PROGRAM EXEMPTIONS
The Senate Agriculture Committee is
expected to take up a bill tomorrow that would exempt from
government conservation regulations those farmers who have
rotated alfalfa and other multiyear grasses and legumes with
row crops, committee staff said.
    Under current so-called "sodbuster" law, farmers who planted
alfalfa and other multiyear grasses and legumes on highly
erodible land in the years 1981 through 1985 lose federal farm
program benefits if they produce a row crop on that land in
later years.
    Sen. Edward Zorinsky (D-Neb.), sponsor of the measure, said
recently that those crop rotating practices resulted in less
erosion than the practices of many farmers who produced
strictly row crops.
 Reuter
