Bush Rails Against Regulating Farmland

President Bush issued a stern complaint Friday about governmental regulation of private property, declaring that the best environmental policy comes from those who own the land.

He delivered his remarks to the Cattle Industry Convention and Trade Show, offering support for a farm bill pending in Congress that would spend $73.5 billion over 10 years.

Bush said the measure should include incentives to encourage ranchers to adhere to sound conservation practices. Among the environmental issues that have the greatest effect on ranches are overgrazing of land, creating risk of erosion and, near feed lots, the fouling of streams with animal waste.

Bush’s remarks on the environment won him his longest round of applause from an audience filled with ranchers and other cattle industry figures, many dressed in jeans, boots and tall white hats at the Colorado Convention Center.

He raised the environmental concerns in an account of a tour he gave of his ranch near Crawford, Texas, in November for Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and his wife, Lyudmila.

The Putins expressed surprise that government policy did not regulate what trees he could cut, Bush said.

The decision of an individual property owner, Bush said, “makes better environmental policy, better land-use policy, than if it was dictated from a central source of people, many of whom have probably never been on the land.”

The Senate is expected to vote on a final farm measure next week, while the House has already passed farm legislation. A committee from the two bodies will work to reconcile differences in the legislation.

Bush’s comments were his most extensive on the farm bill.

In expressing support for the cost of the measure, Bush said he wanted the money to be spent “relatively evenly over the decade,” rather than offering greater sums in the early years to win political support and then watching the farm economy suffer from a lack of support in later years.

“We’ve got to spend the money without, I guess you could call it, political gimmickry,” Bush said. “To put it bluntly, what we don’t want to do is over-promise to farmers and under-perform.”

Agriculture Secretary Anne M. Veneman said Bush’s remarks were directed at the Senate bill, which she said spends the money unevenly.

Bush sought the industry’s support for another measure: giving the administration enhanced authority to negotiate trade agreements.

“We want people in China eating U.S. beef,” Bush said. At the same time, “it’s in our national security interests that we be able to feed ourselves.

“Thank goodness we don’t have to rely on somebody else’s meat to make sure our people are healthy and well fed.”

After the speech, Bush flew to Salt Lake City for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. He will spend the rest of the weekend in Jackson Hole, Wyo.