The House Agriculture Committee will begin rewriting the nation’s farm laws with a markup of conservation provisions next week, the panel’s chairman said Thursday.

Collin C. Peterson, D-Minn., said he was planning to release a bipartisan draft of the conservation title that would serve as a “starting point.” The Conservation, Credit, Energy and Research Subcommittee will mark up the provisions May 22.

The announcement kicks off this year’s reauthorization of the 2002 farm law (PL 107-171), which governs subsidies for farmers and agricultural programs. The conservation title is one of 10 in the bill. Most will be handled individually by House Agriculture subcommittees in the coming weeks, Peterson said.

The livestock title will be second in line, with a subcommittee markup May 24. The full committee expects to approve the overall bill by the July Fourth recess, Peterson said.

Allowing the subcommittees to mark up each title illustrates the panel’s bipartisan approach to farm policy, he said.

“The important thing is that we are working together,” he said. “I intend it to be an inclusive process.”

The conservation title funds Agriculture Department programs for preserving land or retiring it from agricultural use.

While those programs are not the most expensive part of the farm bill — the Agriculture Department spent only 11 percent of its budget on conservation in fiscal 2006 — they could be highly vulnerable to amendments on the House floor.

They’re vulnerable because some interest groups, such as environmentalists and nutrition advocates, want to see money shifted from crop subsidies to conservation in an effort to make U.S. farm policy more acceptable to the World Trade Organization. Crop subsidies often meet with resistance at the WTO.

Peterson may have already set himself up for a funding battle outside the confines of his committee.

The draft reflects some program shifts that committee members say are necessary given the tight farm bill budget, Peterson said. The proposed shuffling is expected to include a $1.1 billion decrease in funding for the Conservation Security Program, which pays farmers to employ environmentally friendly practices on their land.

The money, Peterson said, may very well be used to help add 1.5 million acres — about $1.6 billion worth — to the Wetlands Reserve Program, which pays farmers to retire wetlands acres for hunting and preservation.

Wetlands conservation is important to hunting and fishing groups that Peterson has aligned himself with. The reprogrammed dollars probably will go to other conservation programs as well.

Aware of the potential battle ahead, Peterson reiterated his primacy over the process. “We’re the folks who live with [farming] all the time, every day,” he said, adding that members of his committee were the most knowledgeable people in Congress to vet various proposals.

At the same time Peterson tries to build consensus on his panel, cuts to the Conservation Security Program and other environmental initiatives could alienate other Democrats, including Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee.

Harkin created the program in the 2002 farm law and is fiercely protective of it, especially because the Bush administration repeatedly has called for cutting it.

“The House bill perpetuates the damage to conservation and the environment caused by the previous two Congresses and the Bush administration,” Harkin said in a statement. “Farmers need more conservation funding on agricultural land, yet the House bill doesn’t provide it.”

Harkin and Peterson are likely to clash over other issues. While Peterson would like to include a permanent disaster fund for farmers who lose crops to fire, flood and drought, Harkin says he would rather boost crop insurance.

Harkin said earlier this month that he will release his bill by June.

Even if Peterson can get support for his proposed changes to the conservation title and the overall legislation, the entire process will be complicated by budgetary issues.

The biggest headache is a tight overall budget. The 2002 farm bill cost much less than expected, so the Congressional Budget Office cut $60 billion from the baseline for this year’s bill. Lawmakers will have a $20 billion reserve fund to work with, but they must find offsets to dip into that pot of money.

Such budget restraints make it nearly impossible to add new programs, let alone boost existing initiatives. So far, leadership has promised only $4 billion to $5 billion in extra funding for new initiatives on crop-based fuels such as ethanol, Peterson said.

Peterson and ranking Republican Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia will spend the next few weeks negotiating with House leaders to find additional funding. In the meantime, funding boosts are only promises, Goodlatte said.

“We don’t know that what we’ve put into this at the end of the day will be a reality,” he said. “It’s a pretty haphazard way to write a farm bill.”