The lower rental rates set in the 2018 farm law for the Conservation Reserve may be discouraging enrollment in the program to idle fragile farmland. The USDA said on Thursday that it had accepted for entry 9 of every 10 acres offered in the recently completed “general” signup, for a total of 3.4 million acres — 2 million fewer acres than will leave the reserve this fall.
“It does seem to show that the rental rate caps matter,” said Pat Westhoff, director of the FAPRI think tank at the University of Missouri.
Much of the incoming land is in wheat states. The top states for acceptances were Texas, at 540,481 acres, Kansas (436,120 acres), Colorado (435,455 acres), Washington State (277,533 acres), and Iowa (267,182 acres).
Congress raised the enrollment ceiling for the Conservation Reserve to 27 million acres in the 2018 law — up from the previous cap of 24 million acres — while reducing the annual rental payment substantially as a cost-saving measure and to keep the government from crowding out farmers seeking to expand their operations. In the past, the payments were set at the average land rental rate in a county. Now the rate is 85 percent of the county average for the general signup — open to large tracts such as entire fields — and 90 percent for land entering through the continuous enrollment option for high-priority practices on small pieces of land.
Some 22 million acres are enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program at present, with contracts due to expire on 5.4 million acres on Sept. 30. The 2018 farm law says a maximum of 24.5 million acres can be enrolled this year, an interim step toward a ceiling of 27 million acres in 2023. Westhoff said FAPRI “did expect the limit on rental rates to matter,” so its agricultural baseline assumes enrollment will stay below the Conservation Reserve ceiling over the next decade.
The general signup is not the final word on enrollment this year. Signup runs through May 15 for a Conservation Reserve grassland initiative to preserve rangelands, pastures, and grasslands. The 2018 farm law designated 2 million acres in the Conservation Reserve for the grasslands initiative. Landowners can also use the continuous enrollment option, and one-third of the land now in the Conservation Reserve, or 6.5 million acres, entered that way.
Enrollment in a small-scale — up to 50,000 acres in the prairie pothole region of the northern Plains — pilot effort called the Soil Health and Income Protection Program begins on Monday. While the CRP requires landowners to retire land for 10 or 15 years in exchange for an annual payment, SHIPP will offer contracts of three, four, or five years.
The general signup that ended a month ago was the first since 2016. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said it had attracted “one of our largest signups in many years.”
Ferd Hoefner of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said the USDA had used a “very low” Environmental Benefit Index rating of 210 as the cutoff for accepting land into the reserve. The EBI cutoff should be in the mid-200s, he said, to produce real benefits to land, water, and wildlife conservation. As a result, “we’re not too disappointed” by the relatively small enrollment, said Hoefner.
Fifteen percent of the accepted acreage, or 487,500 acres, was offered as part of a program called State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement, which focuses on the adoption of practices, based on locally developed objectives, that restore vital habitat.
A USDA table of acreage offered and accepted for the Conservation Reserve is available here.
The USDA summary of Conservation Reserve enrollment is available here.