Enrollment drops in Conservation Reserve
The lower rental rates set in the 2018 farm law for the Conservation Reserve may be discouraging enrollment in the program to idle fragile farmland. The USDA said on Thursday that it had accepted for entry 9 of every 10 acres offered in the recently completed "general" signup, for a total of 3.4 million acres — 2 million fewer acres than will leave the reserve this fall.
USDA opens enrollment as Conservation Reserve grows for first time since 2007
The Conservation Reserve signup that opens on Monday could see landowners idle the largest amount of fragile cropland in years, said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, although some analysts say lower government payment rates will hold down enrollment in the program.
USDA expects to enroll ‘a large number of acres’ in Conservation Reserve
The USDA will hold its first “general” signup for the land-idling Conservation Reserve Program under the 2018 farm bill in early December, and “we expect to enroll a large number of acres,” said Deputy Agriculture Secretary Steve Censky on Thursday.
Summer shower of federal cash to follow rainy spring in Farm Belt
Farmers can expect a deluge of federal payments in the weeks ahead to cushion the effect of farm exports lost to the trade war and plantings washed away by the rainiest spring in a quarter-century, say analysts. "It's probably going to be August" when the biggest shower of payments begins, the multibillion-dollar, stop-gap Market Facilitation Program, according to Agriculture Undersecretary Bill Northey, who oversees farm subsidies.
Peterson challenges USDA on land stewardship offers
Almost as soon as the USDA offered to admit land in need of high-priority stewardship practices into the long-term Conservation Reserve Program, the House Agriculture chairman threatened on Thursday to void the offer. “I am going to stop it somehow or other,” chairman Collin Peterson told two USDA officials.
Sign-up for ARC and PLC may begin Sept. 1
Late this summer, growers will get their first chance in years to switch between the Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage subsidies, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue told lawmakers last week. During testimony at two hearings, Perdue also said the USDA would hold a "general" sign-up for the Conservation Reserve before the end of the year.
Trump injects food stamp limits into signing of ‘really tremendous’ farm bill
At the same time President Trump signed into law the 2018 farm bill, which modestly strengthens the farm safety net, loosens farm subsidy rules, and legalizes industrial hemp, he announced “immediate action on welfare reform” on Thursday through stricter enforcement of time limits on food stamps to able-bodied adults.
Cotton industry targets Senate limits on farm subsidies
The House and Senate made relatively few changes to the farm program in passing separate versions of the new farm bill. The next step is to reconcile differences in the bills, and the cotton industry's desire to protect its subsidies is just one of a long list of likely flashpoints.
Senators want farm bill emphasis on green payments, not land retirement
President Trump called for elimination of the USDA’s green-payment program for working lands conservation in his budget. Now four members of the Senate Agriculture Committee are taking the opposite approach.
Bill calls for USDA to report on which stewardship programs work best
The USDA spends several billion dollars a year on voluntary land stewardship programs. With the 2018 farm bill on the horizon, two members of the House Agriculture Committee have unveiled legislation that would require the USDA to evaluate and report on the impact of the soil and water projects it bankrolls.
Make stewardship mandatory on farms, says free-enterprise group
Since the 1930s, the government has relied on voluntary conservation efforts by farmers, often supplemented by federal payments, to reduce erosion and protect water quality. That approach is no longer sufficient, says the American Enterprise Institute.
USDA green-payment program covers 8 percent of U.S. farmland
Some 72 million acres of farmland are enrolled in the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), 8 percent of all U.S. farmland and equal in size to Iowa and Georgia combined, says the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition in a report. The CSP was the first program at USDA to provide an annual payment to producers who adopt conservation practices as part of their daily operations. The green-payment program is nearly three times larger than the better-known Conservation Reserve, which pays landowners to idle fragile land.
USDA starts and once again stops entry to long-term Conservation Reserve
With the start of the new fiscal year, the USDA said it will accept most of the pending applications to enroll land in the Conservation Reserve, the first time in five months that land has been accepted under the so-called continuous enrollment option. At the same time, the Farm Service Agency said it suspended work on applications submitted after Sept. 30 "until later in the 2018 fiscal year" so it does not exceed the 24 million-acre limit for the land-idling program.
Low commodity prices spur Senate interest in idling cropland
Senators from the Plains and Upper Midwest pressed for expansion of the Conservation Reserve Program during a friendly confirmation hearing for Bill Northey, the USDA nominee who would run the program as agriculture undersecretary.
Coalition asks for farm bill rule: Practice stewardship to get U.S. benefits
The 2014 farm law reforged the link between federally subsidized crop insurance and land stewardship. With the 2018 farm bill on the legislative horizon, two dozen farm, wildlife, environmental, and conservation groups urged Congress to “maintain existing conservation compliance requirements as a prerequisite to receiving crop insurance, conservation and commodity program subsidies, and other farm bill benefits.”
House conservatives would rewrite farm supports in Trump’s name
Congress would cut off crop subsidies to wealthy farmers and require growers to pay at least half of the cost of crop insurance premiums if it adopted the policies proposed by Donald Trump when he was president, said the Republican Study Committee in its budget outline for this fiscal year. The group, which speaks for social and fiscal conservatives, said its budget "adopts many of the reforms proposed by the Trump administration to reform and streamline federal spending on agricultural programs."