The Conservation Reserve is a long-term farmland retirement program that pays an annual rent to landowners who idle fragile land under contracts that run at least 10 years. The USDA’s Farm Service Agency says more than one-fifth of the 24 million acres now in the reserve entered it 20 or more years ago, which means it was re-enrolled in the program two or three times.
Texas leads the nation, with 1.1 million acres that have been idled for more than 20 years, including 605,456 acres that have been in the reserve for more than 30 years, or since the program was created. Kansas is second, with 431,000 acres enrolled for more than 20 years, followed by Iowa (354,000 acres), Colorado (331,000 acres), and Washington (324,000 acres).
The USDA data do not identify how the land entered the reserve — under so-called general sign-ups held periodically and open to all landowners or through what’s known as continuous enrollment, where smaller tracts are accepted at any time for specific projects such as well-head protection, filter strips along waterways, or shelterbelts to prevent wind erosion.
Contracts on 17.7 million acres of Conservation Reserve land will expire by 2028, said economist John Newton of the American Farm Bureau Federation. “With millions of acres set to come out of retirement, policymakers may consider which type of cropland to prioritize — i.e., continuous or general sign-up — and how long acres should remain in CRP [Conservation Reserve Program]. There is a renewed interest on Capitol Hill in modifying the [reserve] in the next farm bill to allow for increased enrollment,” wrote Newton.