Last day of CRP general sign up
Farm and Ranch August 27, 2010 Today is the last day of the general sign up for the Conservation Reserve Program. The national Farm Service Agency has emphasized there will be no extension. The close of the business day today at local FSA offices is it. What happens once the sign up is over? USDA Farm Programs deputy administrator Brandon Willis explains. Willis: “We will take all the applicants, all the bids that come in, we will rank those and those that have the highest land to be enrolled, we will let them know in mid-September that they are in the program or they are out of the program.” The contracts that are awarded will be effective October 1st of this year. Just how many acres will USDA accept into the CRP from this general sign up? Undersecretary Jim Miller says the 2008 Farm Bill set a statutory limit of 32 million acres and there are currently 31 million enrolled in all the various CRP programs. Miller: “However at the end of this fiscal year on September 30th 2010 about 4.5 million acres will be expiring. Therefore we are expecting to accept enough acres in this general sign up, as well as the other CRP initiatives such as continuous sign up, to bring CRP enrollment close to the 32 million acre statutory cap.” Producers enrolling in CRP plant long-term, resource conserving covers on environmentally sensitive land in exchange for rental payments, cost-share and technical assistance. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net.
