Agricultural News
CRP General Sign-up Offers Conservation Opportunities
Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:49:09 CDT
Beginning on May 20, the US Department of Agriculture will hold a Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) general sign-up. According to PLJV Conservation Policy Director Barth Crouch, this is a good opportunity to enroll expiring or new acres of marginal, highly erodible land into the Conservation Reserve; however, like all opportunities, the details are important. The program currently has around 27 million acres enrolled with 3.3 million acres due to expire on October 1 of this year. This means there is the opportunity for approximately 7 million acres of highly erodible cropland to be protected during this sign-up.
"With droughts plaguing the western Great Plains, this gives landowners a chance to decide which of their acres are best suited for farming and conserve the acres least suited for agricultural production," says Crouch. "When that land is enrolled and converted to a grass and forb cover, it will provide homes for grassland birds for the next ten years, and hopefully beyond."
To prepare for the general sign-up, the Farm Service Agency is conducting a review of the soil rental rates, which is the amount paid to the contract landowners based on the soils in their fields. The new rates will be based on the National Agricultural Statistics Service's cash rental data, plus ten percent. Although this method works well in areas where cash rent is the dominant way agreements between landowners and agricultural tenants are handled, it falls far short in areas where shared cropping the landowner and the tenant split expenses and profits is the dominant method of renting farm ground. To show the problem this can cause, in the five states that cover the range of the Lesser Prairie-Chicken Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas there were substantial numbers of counties where soil rental rates went down from $1 to $4 per acre after the initial review.
"Lowering the rental rates may influence landowners, even in the face of drought conditions, to try to put expiring CRP acres back into cropping of wheat, corn or soybeans," says Crouch, "and it is critical that we retain these acres, especially in areas that are serving as valuable habitat for the Lesser Prairie-Chicken. One alternative is to enroll expiring or new acres into Continuous CRP practices that pay sign-up incentive payments of $150 per acre."
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