The USDA accepted nearly 2 out of every 3 acres that were offered this spring for enrollment into the Conservation Reserve grasslands initiative, 1.2 million acres in all, said the Farm Service Agency on Thursday. The program pays landowners an annual rent to protect grasslands, rangelands, and pastures, while allowing them to conduct common grazing practices on the land along with haying and harvesting seed.
Some 919,283 acres are already enrolled in the grasslands program, so the newly accepted land will raise the total to roughly 2.1 million acres. The average payment is now $13.52 an acre. Grasslands contracts run up to 15 years.
The 2018 farm law raised the cap on Conservation Reserve enrollment to 27 million acres from the previous ceiling of 24 million acres, and reserved 2 million acres within the cap for grasslands. The Conservation Reserve is the largest U.S. land-idling program.