2021 CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) Sign Up Dashboard

Oct 26, 2021

By Carl Zulauf
Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics
Ohio State University

Krista Swanson, Gary Schnitkey, and Nick Paulson
Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics
University of Illinois

This article discusses acres enrolled in CRP (Conservation Reserve Program), including acres accepted for 2021 sign up. Compared with the acres enrolled in CRP as of July 31, 2021; 2021 accepted acres emphasize the Grassland CRP sub-program. The Appendix contains a brief description of CRP and its 3 sub-programs: General CRP, Continuous CRP, and Grassland CRP.

CRP acres: As of July 31, 2021, 20.6 million acres were enrolled in CRP (see Figure 1) (USDA, FSA (US Department of Agriculture, Farm Service Agency), 2021c). Sub-program shares were General CRP (54%), Continuous CRP (37%), and Grassland CRP (9%).

Conservation Reserve Program

All but 2 (Illinois and Mississippi) of the 15 states with the most acres enrolled in CRP are west of the Mississippi River (see Figure 2). The 6 states that lie on the north-south longitude from Texas to North Dakota account for 41% of CRP acres. Texas has the largest individual state share at 11%.

Texas has the largest individual state share

Changes for 2021 Sign Up: Changes for General and Continuous CRP included greater flexibility in soil rental rates (increased in some situations), a 10% life-of-contract increase in rental rate, and 3%, 5% or 10% incentive payments for adopting practices designated as sequestering more carbon and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The latter included establishment of trees and permanent grasses, development of wildlife habitat, and wetland restoration. For Continuous CRP only, the incentive payments for adopting water quality benefiting practices was increased from 10% to 20%. For Grassland CRP, a $15/acre minimum rental rate was established and National Grassland Priority Zones were designated with a focus on migratory corridors and environmentally sensitive areas. For a complete list of 2021 sign up changes, see the “What’s New” factsheet (USDA, FSA, 2021b).

2021 Accepted Acres: Acres accepted for General CRP totaled 1.9 million (USDA, FSA, 2021c). Half were in Texas, Colorado, and Kansas while 92% were in the 15 states with the most accepted acres (see Figure 3). Note, an accepted acre is not necessarily a future enrolled acre as an owner can opt out of an accepted offer before the enrollment period starts.

2021 Accepted Acres

Acres accepted into Grassland CRP totaled 2.5 million (USDA, FSA, 2021c). Colorado, South Dakota, and Nebraska accounted for 54% while 99% were in the 15 states with the largest accepted acres (see Figure 4).

Acres accepted into Grassland CRP

Figure 5 contains the difference between a state’s share of combined acres accepted into General and Grassland CRP in 2021 and its share of acres enrolled in CRP as of July 2021 for states with a share difference of 1 or more percentage point (pp). Colorado stand outs. Its 2021 acceptance share was 13 pp greater than its July 2021 enrollment share (20.5% vs. 7.6%). On the other hand, Iowa’s share difference was -7.6 pp (0.5% vs. 8.1%). The 7 states with a +1 or more pp difference were among the 8 states with the largest 2021 grassland sign up (compare Figures 4 and 5). This relationship is not surprising since Grassland CRP accounted for 58% of Grassland and General CRP 2021 accepted acres but only 9% of enrolled CRP acres as of July 31, 2021.

contains the difference between a state’s share of combined acres accepted into General and Grassland CRP

USDA, FSA (2021f) has also reported that 897,000 acres have been accepted for enrollment in the Continuous CRP as of August 23, 2021. No state breakout is available at present.

Summary Observations

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is a conservation portfolio program.

General CRP is arguably the sub-program most associated with CRP with its historic emphasis on removing highly erodible whole fields from crop production. However, only slightly more than half of current enrolled CRP acres are in the General CRP.

Over one third of enrolled CRP acres are in the Continuous CRP. It couples environmentally beneficial farm practices to a specific site, often a sub-field area, to achieve environmental benefits while keeping some to most of the field in production.

Grassland CRP, currently the smallest of the 3 sub-programs, had the largest share of 2021 accepted acres. Potential reasons for high sign up are establishment of a minimum US Grassland CRP rental rate, high crop prices that limited interest in enrolling cropland in CRP, and low profitability in cattle.

Given the wide-spread interest in carbon sequestration, an interesting policy question is how much additional carbon will be sequestered because of the 2021 sign up. This question is of particular interest for the acres accepted into the Grassland CRP since many were probably used as pasture.

Source : illinois.edu

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”