The USDA will accept more than 1 million acres of the land that was offered for entry into the land-idling Conservation Reserve during the recent signup for large tracts of land, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Monday. Contracts expire on 2 million acres of land in the reserve this fall and enrollment of 23 million acres is well below the ceiling of 27 million acres.
Landowners offered 1.2 million acres during the so-called general signup that ended on April 7. Some 891,000 acres of it was land with an expiring contract. The USDA said it would accept more than 1 million acres but the precise figure would not be until later this year.
When the general signup began, the Farm Service Agency said it “is aiming to reach the 27 million-acre cap statutorily set for fiscal year 2023.”
There are other ways to put land into the reserve, which pays landowners an annual rent to setaside fragile cropland for 10 years or longer. A signup for the CRP Grassland option, which protects grasslands from conversion, ended on May 26. So-called continuous enrollment is available for high-priority practices, such as buffer strips or windbreaks, on small acreages.
Of the 23 million acres now in the Conservation Reserve, 8.4 million acres were fields and large tracts accepted through a general signup, 8.2 million acres entered through continuous enrollment and 6.4 million acres were enrolled under the grassland option, said a USDA summary.