The Conservation Reserve Program is one of the most widely used conservation programs in the United States. In 2007, it will continue on strong thanks to an early re-enrollment and extension plan offered from the Farm Service Agency (FSA).
A year ago, 44 percent of the 36 million acres in Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contracts were set to expire within 12 months. The giant expiration had the potential to return 16 million of acres to production. By August 2006, however, the FSA had implemented an early contract re-enrollment and extension offer (REX) that reduced the number of acres coming out of CRP contracts to 3 million.
The Environmental Benefit Index rates CRP offers from landowners on:
-Wildlife habitat benefits resulting from covers on contract acreage
-Water quality benefits from reduced erosion, runoff, and leaching
-On-farm benefits from reduced erosion
-Benefits that will likely endure beyond the contract period
-Air quality benefits from reduced wind erosion
-Cost
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Looking farther down the calendar to 2020, the same acres will expire, but, thanks to REX, do so incrementally, giving FSA time to enroll new acres. The program looked at the original Environmental Benefit Index (EBI) scores of the contracts and offered 10-year extensions to those who scored in the top 20 percent, five-year extensions to those in the next 20 percent and three-year, two-year and one-year extensions to each of the subsequent percentiles. The result is that CRP can remain near full enrollment and landowners continue to receive the same payments. The national average for CRP payments is $49 per acre.
The early offer of re-enrollment also prevented an environmentally and potentially economically disastrous year in 2007. “What this does is reduce the peak that would have been detrimental to markets and the environment,” says Mike Linsenbigler, deputy director of conservation and environment at FSA. “There could have been price and logistic complications if 16 million acres returned to production in a single year,”
The work at FSA local offices, where CRP contracts are issued and maintained, would have been crushing. The ever-shrinking pool of employees in local USDA service centers are under increasing pressure to become more efficient in managing their already enormous workloads. An onslaught of 16 million acres worth of expiring CRP contracts would have put a significant amount of paperwork in front of those already time-strapped employees. “From a workload stand point, [REX] makes it easier for USDA to service those contracts as they come out of CRP,” says Linsenbigler
Linsenbigler makes a point to list all the benefits of the program. “It prevents 450 million tons of soil a year from eroding,” he says, quoting the oft heard statistic. “And it’s voluntary.” At the local level, the early REX offer was more than protecting markets and field office workloads. It protected the quality of life of many rural Americans who choose to participate in the program.
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Conservation Reserve Program acres like this were able to stay enrolled thanks to early re-enrollment and extension.
Photo courtesy of FSA. |
“It’s a life saver,” says Brenda Minix, a FSA program technician in Starke County, Ind. “For the elderly or someone who’s been widowed, someone who’s gone from operator to operator not always getting paid rent, the security of knowing they’ll get a check every October makes an enormous difference.” According to Minix, even the real estate agents in Starke County are aware of the benefits of CRP. “A lot of them use it as a selling point for property.”
Two winters of low precipitation in Starke County led to significant wind erosion in areas that contain predominantly sandy soils. Phil Brown, a producer there, recently had to replace several feet of soil with wood chips and cover them with soil and a grass-broadleaf mix to recover the area. His ground enrolled in CRP faired better.
“The filter strips really hold [the soil] in place,” Brown says. “And just from a cost standpoint, if you were going to farm that sandy soil, you waste all the nitrogen you put down.” The nitrogen would quickly leach through the soil profile. Thanks to an early re-enrollment, Brown didn’t have to choose between returning the lower yielding ground to production to produce an income or leaving it in grass.
When asked what she thought was the most important benefit of CRP, Minix replied, “Happy landowners.” Many in the conservation community are happy, too, that REX can keep millions of acres in CRP.
