Potential for Cost-Share Policies to Improve Groundwater Quality Without Reducing Farm Profits

The Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act (FAIR) of reinforced the Federal government\u27s commitment to environmental aspects of farm policy that received major attention in 1985 legislation and reinforcement in 1990. All three pieces of legislation placed emphasis on incentive and cost-share policies to reduce adverse soil and water effects of farming practices. A major initiative under FAIR is the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), for which $1.3 billion is authorized over 7 years to provide cost-share or incentive payment contracts with crop and livestock producers for environmental and conservation improvements (Young and Shields, 1996). In part, this program is a greatly expanded outgrowth of two other Federal programs that originated in the early 1990s--the Integrated Crop Management (ICM) program and the Water Quality Incentives Program (WQIP)