Crop Prices Cut Into Conservation

  • Corn production in Colorado. (Photo by Scott Bauer, courtesy of the USDA Agricultural Research Service)

With grain prices hitting record highs, a lot
of farmers are removing land from the federal Conservation
Reserve Program. The CRP pays farmers to stop growing
crops on poor land and instead grow trees or grass cover.
That creates habitat for wildlife. The US Department of
Agriculture, which runs the program, says the CRP is still
in good shape. Katherine Glover reports some conservationists
disagree:

Transcript

With grain prices hitting record highs, a lot
of farmers are removing land from the federal Conservation
Reserve Program. The CRP pays farmers to stop growing
crops on poor land and instead grow trees or grass cover.
That creates habitat for wildlife. The US Department of
Agriculture, which runs the program, says the CRP is still
in good shape. Katherine Glover reports some conservationists
disagree:

When the Conservation Reserve Program started in 1985, David Schoenborn was among
the first on board.

He stopped farming some of his land and let natural cover grow. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture paid him. Usually land that wasn’t the best farmland or land that was prone
to erosion was set aside for the program.

Conservationists say CRP has been great for reducing soil erosion, improving water
quality and restoring wildlife habitat.

But this year, for the first time, Schoenborn is letting some of his CRP contracts expire.

“It’s not a bad program, but the payments have to be more to keep them in line with the
rest of the farming economy.”

Corn and other grain prices are at record highs. So a lot of farmers are taking land out of
CRP and plowing it up. The program lost more than two million acres last September.

It could have been much worse. Originally sixteen million acres were set to expire in ’07.
But, in 2006 the USDA offered landowners the option to renew their contracts. About 80
to 85 percent of the land was re-enrolled.

The USDA is focusing its conservation efforts towards environmentally sensitive lands
and critical wildlife habitat.

Perry Aasness is the state director for the USDA Farm Service Agency in Minnesota.

“We’re not enrolling whole fields of land anymore, but there are still conservation
programs which we call the continuous CRP and that primarily focuses on really
targeting buffer strips, waterways, and that sort of thing.”

The targeted programs pay more than the general CRP contracts, making them more
attractive to farmers. Schoenborn, for example, is reenrolling eligible lands in these
targeted programs.

Altogether, the various programs have about 34 million acres enrolled. This is slightly
above the average enrollment for the past ten years, but less than the 39 million acres
authorized by Congress. Aasness says the program is still in good shape.

“I think the overall percentage of land going into production from CRP is pretty
minimal.”

But conservationists have a different perspective. They want to see as much land as
possible enrolled in CRP.

Dave Nomsen is with the conservation group Pheasants Forever:

“Frankly I think the program is more in doubt than it ever has been. It’s great that
farmers are benefiting from record crop prices but it’s making it a real challenge to keep
conservation as part of that agricultural landscape.”

And political pressure is part of that challenge.

The American Bakers Association even asked the government to let CRP contracts expire
early so farmers can plant more grain. This would hopefully lower the price of flour.

But a huge reduction in CRP acres is unlikely. Both Republicans and Democrats support
CRP.

Dave Nomsen with Pheasants Forever says the problem is finding enough money to make
it worth it to farmers.

CRP payments do change over time depending on the market. But Nomsen says they
haven’t kept up.

“It’s been lagging behind by several years. We just don’t have the money to raise it up to
an equal basis, but if we can get those payments high enough the long-term nature of the
contracts, the many, many other benefits of the program will hopefully sell the program
for farmers and landowners.”

Farmer David Schoenborn says payments vary, but generally he gets between 75 and 90
dollars an acre. By planting corn, he thinks he could make at least $400 an acre. But he’d
stay in CRP if payments increased just 30 percent.

That’s not likely. So chances are that more farmers will be putting land that’s set aside
for wildlife back into crops.

For the Environment Report, I’m Katherine Glover.

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