CRP Re-Enrollment/Extension Deadline Looms
Decisions you make now affect contracts expiring through 2010.
John Otte
Published: May 8, 2006
About 400,000 Conservation Reserve Program contracts on 28 million acres will expire between Sept. 30, 2007 and Sept. 30, 2013. USDA is offering certain CRP participants the opportunity to re-enroll in new CRP contracts. Other CRP participants may extend their current contracts.
Contracts on about 6.4 million acres entered in the CRP under general enrollments are scheduled to expire between Sept. 30, 2008 and Sept. 30, 2010. Deadline for producers holding those contracts to tell USDA they want to re-enroll or extend their contracts is June 30, 2006.
CRP participants with contracts expiring on Sept. 30, 2007 needed to notify USDA's Farm Service Agency of their intent to re-enroll or extend their contract by the end of April.
EBI score determines your eligibility
USDA will rank producers wishing to re-enroll based on their environmental benefits index scores and whether the land is in a national priority area.
USDA will offer to re-enroll the most fragile land - the 20% with the highest EBI scores- for 10 years at updated, likely higher, rental rates.
USDA will offer the remaining 80% contract extensions of two to five years. Extended contracts will stay at their current rental rates.
The frozen CRP payment rates on the less fragile land may make owners of that land more willing to bring the land back into production.
Land coming out needs a conservation plan
Land exiting CRP must be farmed according to a conservation plan. Fortunately, developing conservation plans for the less fragile, though still highly erodible, land should be easier than constructing plans for the most fragile land.
Operators wanting to rent land that may come out of CRP should work on sample conservation plans for highly erodible land that make sense for crops, soil types, crop rotations plus fit production practices in the area. Having most of the legwork on a conservation plan already done will make an operator a more attractive bidder when approaching a CRP landowner.
CABs may be in limbo
If at the time land entered the CRP, the CRP acres plus Crop Acreage Bases on the farm exceeded total cropland, the CABs were reduced.
USDA does not know if CABs on CRP contracts expiring on or after Sept. 30, 2007 will be restored when the land exits the CRP. Congress will need to settle that issue in the 2007 Farm Bill.
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Tagged: CRP, usda, farm, farm bill, Farm Service Agency
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