Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says USDA plans to hold a new general signup for the conservation reserve program, the first signup since 2006. Details such as payment rates will come in late spring or early summer, Vilsack said during a meeting in Iowa.
CRP offers landowners annual payments on 10- to 15-year contracts for establishing native grasses, shrubs, trees and wetlands on their land. According to USDA, contracts holding 4.4 million acres of CRP will expire Sept. 30, 2010, and an additional 14.2 million CRP acres will expire between 2011 and 2013 (4.4 million acres on Sept. 30, 2011; 6.5 million acres Sept. 30, 2012; 3.3 million acres Sept. 30, 2013). Congress has authorized up to 32 million acres in the program.
Vilsack also said USDA will increase by 300,000 acres allotments for three other federal conservation programs. Those programs will be offered in the continuous CRP signup beginning March 15. Acreage caps for the three continual signup programs that will be expanded are:
- Conservation Practice 33, or the "Upland Bird Habitat Buffers," will be increased by 100,000 acres, and will be distributed in the midwestern and southern states that are part of the native range for bobwhite quail.
- Conservation Practice 37, or the "Duck Nesting Habitat Initiative," will be increased by 50,000 acres for states in the Prairie Pothole Region with the majority of the allotment going to North Dakota and South Dakota.
- Conservation Practice 38, or the "State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement" program, will be increased by 150,000 acres and spread out among numerous states, including Iowa. The practice focuses on environmentally sensitive land and species that have seen significant declines in recent years.
Vilsack also said USDA is offering a new $50 million program to pay to improve access to private lands for hunting and fishing. Another $320 million program in Upper Mississippi River states is designed to reduce pollution that leads to a so-called "dead zone" of low oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico. Those programs combined should make it more lucrative for farmers to choose conservation over corn on marginal land, Vilsack said.
USDA has been working on a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) for the conservation reserve program since the department held a series of listening sessions around the country in September and October of 2009. The goal was to have the draft SEIS issued by January with a final SEIS to be ready by April. But so far, that draft SEIS has not yet been released.
But the statement by Vilsack that USDA wants to keep full enrollment in the CRP at least suggests that officials have backed away from potential plans to dramatically scale back the program.
Last fall in its call for comments, the department noted that it could either maintain the CRP at 32 million acres or cut it to 24 million acres. However, the CRP approach that USDA sought comments on would keep the program at 32 million acres, which would be divided between 24 million enrolled via general signups and 8 million for "targeted" signups, such as the conservation reserve enhancement program; continuous signups; farmable wetlands; state acres for wildlife enhancement; and other initiatives.
