Cami Koons covers agriculture and the environment for Iowa Capital Dispatch, where this article first appeared.
A federal judge heard oral arguments on March 31 in a case that could overturn a decades-old statute tying wetland conservation to federal farm benefit eligibility.
The plaintiff CTM Holdings, which owns and rents land to Iowa farmers, sued over the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “swampbuster” law, alleging its implementation is unconstitutional, and that it takes land without any compensation to landowners.
The government defendants and intervening environmental groups argued against CTM and alleged the company had no standing as it had not suffered any injury from the statute.
Chief Judge C.J. Williams, for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, questioned whether the whole issue was a “failure to communicate” between the landowner and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), which carries out the swampbuster rule.
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