With simpler rules and caps on payment rates, the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays landowners to idle fragile land for 10 years or longer, could expand from its current limit of 24 million acres, says the Democratic leader on the House Agriculture Committee. “There’s a lot of reforms that could be done on CRP,” said Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson at the North American Agricultural Journalists meeting.
Congress scaled down the CRP as part of the 2014 farm law, written when commodity prices were booming and more cropland was needed. With prices in a trough, there is interest in boosting the size of the CRP, with the dual benefit to producers of an annual rent check for land in the reserve and potentially higher market prices because of less land in crop production. The 24 million-acre cap on CRP holds the reserve at its lowest level since 1988. Peterson has suggested setting enrollment as high as 40 million acres. South Dakota Sen. John Thune has suggested a short-term version of CRP with a lower rental rate.
There is little prospect for additional funding for stewardship programs in the 2018 farm bill, which would make expansion of CRP difficult. But Peterson said savings are available within the program. USDA could require lower-cost seed mixtures when farmers plant ground cover on CRP land, he said, and USDA could rein in the bonuses paid for particular types of wildlife habitat.
“There’s been too much emphasis on continuous and not enough on general signups,” he said. Some practices, such as wellhead protection, windbreaks and filter strips along waterways, are eligible for enrollment at any time but also carry high per-acre payment rates. General enrollments are aimed at large tracts. In the early days of CRP, entire fields and sometimes farms were accepted. In later years, USDA began to require greater and greater environmental benefits from enrollments.