When Congress wrote the 2014 farm law, grain prices were booming and farmers were loath to let cropland sit idle when profits were beckoning. Lawmakers shared the mood and lowered the enrollment ceiling on USDA’s premiere conservation program, the Conservation Reserve. The shoe is on the other foot now that commodity prices are in a multi-year slump. USDA says it saw the strongest competition among landowners in the 30-year history of the Conservation Reserve when it held the first “general” signup in three years. There were 26,000 offers totaling 1.8 million acres to idle cropland in exchange for an annual payment. USDA selected 411,000 acres.
The acceptance rate of 22 percent was the lowest ever and USDA imposed the most rigorous standards yet for the environmental benefits, such as less erosion, higher water quality and better wildlife habitat, that it expects from the land. The reserve protects fragile land with contracts running 10 years or longer. At present, landowners get an average annual payment of $51 an acre for land entering through general enrollments, which are open to everyone.
USDA held the general signup to replace some of the 1.7 million acres covered by contracts that expire this fall. Overall, there are 23.8 million acres in Conservation Reserve, three-fourths of it from general signups.
Besides the general signups held periodically, USDA allows enrollment year-round for high-priority activities such as filter strips along waterways, shelter belts, and wellhead protection. Interest is surging in those practices. Some 364,000 acres were accepted through the continuous enrollment programs in the early months of this fiscal year. Last year, a record 860,000 acres entered the reserve through continuous enrollment. Average payment is $117 an acre on continuous enrollment land.
Enrollment in the Conservation Reserve began to decline in 2007, when the agricultural boom was in its early days, and was down by 34 percent when it reached 24.2 million acres in 2015. The ceiling for enrollment was 32 million acres when the 2014 farm law took effect, with lawmakers slowly lowering the ceiling to 24 million acres for fiscal 2017, which opens on Oct. 1, and for 2018.
Landowners receive nearly $2 billion a year from the program, mostly in rental payments but also financial help for farmers to plant grasses and trees to prevent erosion, improve water quality and provide wildlife habitat.
USDA said it also would accept 101,000 acres into the new Conservation Reserve grasslands program. More than 70 percent of the land is “diverse native grasslands under the threat of conversion,” said USDA. Landowners offered 1 million acres.