News
CRP seeking millions more acres
The USDA Farm Service Agency has opened enrollment in the General Conservation Reserve Program (starting this week) and will open Grasslands CRP enrollment in April.
Robert Bonnie, Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation, says with 2-and-a-half million acres enrolled in Grasslands CRP, 2021 was the largest signup in history and is ideal for livestock producers.
“It’s a working lands program so unlike CRP where we’re taking marginal lands out of production those grassland acres stay in production. And there are opportunities for producers but also for conservation, for clean water, for climate.”
Producers and landowners enrolled a total of 4.6 million acres into CRP signups LAST year.
There are now just over 22 million acres enrolled in CRP, and FSA wants to reach the 25-and-a-half-million-acre cap set for fiscal year 2022.
“We’ll do that both in the general sign-up, we’ll do it through the Grasslands sign-up and then we’ll look for ways through our other continuous programs where we’re targeting particular areas or particularly important lands and we’ll look to enroll lands there as well.”
The general CRP signup runs through March 11th. Grasslands CRP sign-up is April 4th through May 13th.
