With enrollment in the land-idling Conservation Reserve nearing its statutory limit of 24 million acres, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced revisions in the program to protect water quality and to benefit wildlife, pollinators and wetlands. Under one of the changes, USDA will pay up to 90 percent of the cost of environmentally beneficial practices, such as bioreactors and saturated buffers that clean up run-off from drainage lines running beneath cropland.
The new initiative is called Clean Lakes, Estuaries and Rivers (CLEAR) and may reduce nitrate runoff by as much as 40 percent compared to conventional methods, said USDA. “These new methods are especially important in areas where traditional buffers have not been enough to prevent nutrients from reaching bodies of water,” said USDA. Vilsack announced the initiative while in Iowa, where the Des Moines Water Works is suing three counties over nitrate levels in river water.
In the other revision to the Conservation Reserve, USDA will reserve an additional 1.1 million acres for initiatives aimed at wildlife and wetlands. Some 700,000 acres will be added to the State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement, devoted to habitat. Wetlands restoration would see an additional 300,000 acres and pollinator habitat would be given an additional 100,000 acres. To offset the cost of both initiatives, USDA said it would reduce signing bonuses for enrolling land in the reserve and set a cap of $300 an acre on high-priority land.
At latest count, 23.9 million acres were enrolled in the Conservation Reserve, which pays landowners an annual rent if they retire fragile farmland for at least 10 years.