Addressing Drought

Cultivating’s 2014-2018 Farm Bill strategy was to build a durable network of producers, partners and policymaker supporters through strategic conservation project development that could then be mobilized to support expanded drought authority in the Farm Bill. Beginning in 2016, Cultivating developed a bipartisan coalition of congressional champions and producer supporters to develop and secure drought legislation in the 2018 Farm Bill.  With the enactment of this legislation, Cultivating secured access to over $4 billion annually in flexible and mandatory conservation program funding for water conservation, watershed protection, fish and wildlife habitat conservation, and drought-related environmental mitigation.

Cultivating also developed and deployed a strategy to increase the total amount of funding available for conservation programs in the Farm Bill, resulting in an overall increase in conservation title funding of $2.6 billion over the five year life of the bill.  This success reversed the trend of cuts to the title that occurred in the last two Farm Bill cycles.