03/14/07 CRP re-enrollment and ext. results

Farm and Ranch March 14, 2007 Most of the acreage in the Conservation Reserve Program for which contracts expire between 2007 and 2010 will be re-enrolled in the CRP. USDA recently announced that an estimated 23.2 million acres out of 27.8 million acres of eligible CRP contracts are expected to be re-enrolled based on the recent opportunity given participants to re-enroll or extend their contracts. USDA says about 4.6 million acres in CRP will exit the program between 2007 and 2010. USDA chief economist Keith Collins thought a little more would be coming out of CRP but he is not really surprised. Collins: "That percentage of eligible acres that are re-enrolling and extending is very similar to our historical experience. When we offered re-enrollments and extensions in the past we've gotten a similar percentage. So this is consistent with the experience of farmers." Of that 4.6 million acres exiting the program, 1.4 million acres are located in major corn producing states. Here is how the acreage coming out of CRP between 2007 and 2010 breaks down in the Pacific Northwest. Idaho will have approximately 60,266 acres coming out, Oregon 14,646 acres, and Washington could have about 39,650 acres coming out. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network