> The extreme [farming] efficiency [in the US] does not allow for
> much "wasted" land consisting of wildlife/pollinator habitat.  

> we should strongly support subsidies to encourage landowners 
> to set aside portions of their property as wildlife habitat or
> as conservation easements.

I had some land in CRP.
Has anyone else in Bee-L participated in CRP, or did anyone's father have
land in the old "USDA Soil Bank" program?

To be blunt, it would be far wiser to do away with such subsidies
completely.
The same money could be used to permanently acquire land in cohesive blocks
to protect critical habitat.
Then, taxpayers could at least know that they were getting something of
lasting value for their hard-earned tax dollars.
CRPs are good for birds, deer, hunters, and perhaps soil erosion, but
planting tall grasses for a few years will not do much for pollinators.

The reality is that CRPs are a subsidy to enable higher-intensity automation
on tracts that "fit the equipment", by renting out the odd corners "not
worth" planting to the USDA.
The end game looks like this, near Idaho Falls, ID.
https://goo.gl/maps/I6t7K
(Click on "Earth" to get the Satellite view - the round circles are the
limits of irrigation rigs. Zoom and pan around, and guess where the
set-asides are!) 

There are multiple problems that tend to maximize the financial payout to
the landowner for the least value delivered.

1)  Set-asides are a magnet for marginal land that would not have been
planted anyway.
2)  Set-asides adjacent to the farmed areas tend to be pummeled by drift,
overspray, runoff, all the ills of the agricultural-industrial complex.
3)  Set-asides are rarely near water unless they are the riverbanks
themselves.  While a CRP riverbank is great for critters like otters in
Southwestern VA, for all other creatures, without clean water, life is very
difficult.
4)  CRP contracts are 10 or 15-year terms, and farmers will decide to renew
or not based upon commodity prices.  There is no penalty for cultivating a
former set-aside.
5)  Most CRP programs are grassland based.  The money should be focused on
river valleys and specific cohesive habitat areas.

Note that no "habitat" has ever developed in even the widest and most lush
median strip on any interstate highway.  Despite these being seemingly
perfect "greenways", hundreds of miles long, despite the planting of
wildflowers by many states on significant percentages of these medians, and
the widening of many medians on new roads to 80 feet, no "habitat" has
developed on any interstate.  So, much wider swaths are needed to be
effective.  Mere "field edges" won't do.

I could go on, but the point here is that a taxpayer subsidy for large
corporate farms has been based upon the 1950s concept of the "Soil Bank",
and then under Regan, by the concept of the "CRP", or as we called it
"Pheasants From Peasants" and "Bucks for Ducks", as taxpayer dollars funded
the creation of some of the best hunting ranges ever seen by man, if you
call blowing birds out the sky with shotguns "hunting".

The current justification of claiming that set-asides will somehow benefit
pollinators is nothing but the latest excuse to support the theft from wage
earners to subsidize the wealthy. The cynical exploitation of the plight of
bees and beekeepers for the benefit of those who have no intention of
honestly creating any habitat worthy of the name is fraud, nothing more.

If anyone thinks that the prairie wildflowers will spontaneously bloom in
set-asides, please understand that the wildflowers were a direct result of
the periodic burning that was an essential part of the Native American
active and intelligent management of forage lands for buffalo.  Prairies and
meadows don't happen all by themselves, as far too many newly-arrived
homesteaders have learned the hard way.

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