The United States Department of Agriculture's general sign-up deadline for Conservation Reserve Program ended on February 28.
The USDA today announced a nationwide total of accepted acres. Here's a PDF of acceptance by state:
CRP Signup 54 Offered and Acceptable Acres uploaded by Sally Jo Sorensen on Scribd
We're troubled by the acceptance rate for South Dakota of 78 percent.
At Agri-Pulse, Ben Nuelle reports in Over three million acres enrolled in general CRP:
The Agriculture Department is accepting 3.4 million acres into the land-idling Conservation Reserve Program following the first general signup in four years.
The number was expected to be larger by some followers of the program, potentially eclipsing the 4.3 million acres enrolled in 2010, in part because of the sluggish farm economy and the higher cap of 24.5 million acres set by the 2018 farm bill.
Eighty-nine percent of the acreage that landowners offered for the program, about 3.8 million acres, wound up being accepted. The cut-off for enrollment was an environmental benefits index of 210. Texas, Colorado, and Kansas saw some of the highest number of acres, according to USDA's state by state data.
We'll be curious how a Corn Belt state like Minnesota fares. Nuelle continues:
“We’re under the cap,” Farm Service Agency Administrator Richard Fordyce told Agri-Pulse. Something to keep in mind, he said, is that general signup is one program that feeds into the larger CRP total cap, which grows to 27 million by 2023.
“If all of the accepted acres go ahead and go through the process and generate a contract, we’re still going to have some room,” Fordyce said. At this point, it doesn’t look like the agency would have another general signup this year, but he said there would "certainly" be another enrollment period next year.
Jim Inglis, director of governmental affairs for Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, said the acreage "will provide critical conservation and wildlife habitat across the country."
But Inglis said the enrollment is only about halfway toward the 8 million acres needed to meet the 2020 acreage cap.
“Our attention now turns to enrolling acres into the Continuous and Grassland practices, as well as new opportunities in the SHIPP program,” he said. SHIPP, or the Soil Health and Income Protection Program, was created in the 2018 farm bill.
Inglis also noted the comments Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue made before the House Agriculture Committee "that it is his goal to reach full enrollment and that he's amenable to additional signups if needed." For his part, Perdue in a statement Thursday called CRP "one of our nation’s largest conservation endeavors" and said it is "critical in helping producers better manage their operations while conserving valuable natural resources." . . . .
Read the whole article at Agri-Pulse. While the new figures sound impressive, there's more to the story if one looks back beyond the time frame used by the USDA. At Outdoor Life, Bryce Oates reported in What Happens When CRP Land Disappears?:
One of America’s largest wildlife habitat programs has lost 13 million acres since 2007. The Conservation Reserve Program peaked at 37 million acres in 2007, and has declined to 24 million acres today. So what happens when land is no longer enrolled in this critical federal conservation program? In short, it means there’s less game on the landscape.
Conservation programs focused on healthy habitat and water quality are essential ingredients for better hunting and fishing. A key cornerstone of federal conservation spending and priorities, the federal Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) faces an important crossroads as 14 million additional acres are slated to exit the Farm Bill program in the next five years.
Most of the restored acres no longer enrolled in CRP are in the Great Plains, a vast region encompassing Montana, the Dakotas, and Minnesota, Colorado, and Kansas south through Texas. This region is critical for supporting healthy populations of upland gamebirds and waterfowl. Pheasant, quail, ducks, and other species nest, roost, and feed on CRP lands. These restored grasslands also provide gamebirds and other species with cover that provides protection from predators. . . .
In the most comprehensive study of habitat and land use changes in CRP lands that exit the program, USDA and EPA scientists estimate that approximately 30 to 35 percent of expired CRP acres have been returned to intensive row-crop production, primarily for corn and soybeans. The remainder of the expired CRP acres have been converted primarily to hay and pasture production.
There's lots of data in the article for South Dakota--information which doesn't make that 78 percent acceptance rate sound good. We reported in January that a South Dakota state senator thinks constituents pheasant hunting in Minnesota "an abomination".
In What the F@rm B!ll Happened to CRP?, Alex Maggos of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership writes:
Without a doubt, the Conservation Reserve Program is a favorite for sportsmen and farmers—here’s a look at the sweeping changes the 2018 Farm Bill made to this important program
The Conservation Reserve Program helps America’s farmers, ranchers, and forest owners to voluntarily conserve environmentally sensitive land. Thanks to the wildlife habitat benefits of the program, CRP is a household name with landowners and sportsmen in some parts of the country. (At least as much as any of the Farm Bill conservation program acronyms can be.)
Introduced in the 1985 Farm Bill, CRP once supported 37 million acres devoted to conserving soil, water, and wildlife habitat. But Congress reduced the size of the program to just 24 million acres in the 2014 Farm Bill, which forced the U.S. Department of Agriculture to turn down thousands of CRP applications with millions of potential acres for conservation.
Fortunately, the 2018 Farm Bill added 3 million acres back into the program, increasing the size to 27 million acres and helping meet landowner demand. But the additional cost of growing the program was paid for by placing a cap on rental rate payments. For general CRP, which typically includes larger tracts of acreage, lawmakers capped rental rates at 85 percent of the county average, while rental rates for continuous CRP on environmentally sensitive lands were capped at 90 percent.
This means CRP will be less likely to outbid beginning farmers who often lease their land from landowners. The downside being that the lower rental rates could lead to a decrease in landowner demand for the program. We remain optimistic that these changes will help keep CRP viable, and the TRCP is working to ensure the program continues to benefit water quality, wildlife, and landowners as the 2018 Farm Bill is implemented.
That rent cap prompted several bills in the Minnesota legislature this year, with the authors hoping to supplement the rent rate. We first reported about this issue in February's Pheasants, habitat and cropland: the future for pheasants in South Dakota (and Minnesota)
The bipartisan bill, HF2957 was heard in House committees, but with the coronavirus pandemic reshaping the body's agenda, it's anybody's guess what happens next.
Hoosier Ag Today posted the USDA Communications press release as USDA Announces More Than 3.4 Million Acres Selected for General Signup Conservation Reserve Program. Minnesota readers, landowners and outdoor enthusiasts might find this copy of interest:
While the deadline for general CRP signup was February 28, 2020, signups for continuous CRP, Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, CRP Grasslands and the Soil Health and Income Protection Program (SHIPP) are ongoing. The CRP Grasslands deadline is May 15, and the SHIPP signup begins March 30, 2020, and ends August 21, 2020.
Continuous and Grasslands enrollments are available nationwide. All counties located within the Prairie Pothole region states of Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota are eligible for SHIPP.
The chart embedded near the top of this post was found via this press release. More information here at the FSA/USDA.
Photo: Pheasant habitat.
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