Opening Up CRP

Opening Up CRP. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. For the first time in four years - USDA is opening a Conservation Reserve Program general sign-up. Jonathan Coppess - Administrator of the Farm Service Agency in Washington – explains. COPPESS: We are holding our first general sign up for the CRP, the Conservation Reserve Program in 4 years and the Conservation Reserve Program has obviously been a very successful program, it's been up and running for 25 years but we've not held a general sign up for 4 years and this will be the first one obviously in that time period and we started Monday the second and it ends Friday, August 27th. So farmers and land owners have about 4 weeks to get in to a local county office, FSA county office and sign up. Coppess says the first and foremost goal is selecting those lands that are applied for that are the most environmentally sensitive. COPPESS: What it is is it's essentially a competitive process. They're going to make an offer of land to go into the program, we're going to judge it, we evaluate it based on the environmental benefits, the conservation benefits that we would get by putting that land in permanent cover crops for a 10 year contract period. While a 10-year contract is standard - Coppess says there are exceptions. COPPESS: Most of them are 10 years, there are some instances where they may be up to 15 years depending on the situation on the land, some certain wildlife habitat and other highly erodible areas may get a 15 year but the bulk of these are 10 year contracts. Coppess describes lands that are eligible. COPPESS: Just kind of putting it all in perspective, the 2008 Farm Bill put a 32-million acre cap on this program so we cannot have more than 32-million acres nationwide in the CRP program. So obviously with that kind of limitation we want to make certain that the acreage we put in, those acres are the most environmentally sensitive and we're getting th most conservation benefit for every dollar we spend on this because we pay out an annual rental rate to the owner to keep this land in permanent cover. So the main eligibility criteria – it has to have been cropland that was put into production for 4 of 6 years between 2002 and 2007 or it has been in the CRP previously. So if it's already been in CRP it's still eligible to go back in, in the general sign up. The land owner is not going to be punished essential for not having a crop because it was in the program before so that's covered. And the other piece of eligibility is our what we call the erodablity index and that's a measure of how much, how highly erodible the ground is so if it's an 8 on that index or higher then it is considered highly erodible land and it's eligible for this general sign up. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.