June 11

Limited opportunities remain for new Conservation Reserve Program acreage to be enrolled. Only a limited number of acres in CRP contracts will expire through 2002. USDA also must hold to an enrollment capacity for the continuous signup.

"Unless legislative efforts to raise the acreage cap are successful, land owners who waited to enroll land through the regular CRP signees may now have waited too long," economist Mark Smith writes in the June-July issue of USDA's Agricultural Outlook.

"With relatively few opportunities for enrolling land under the CRP, eligible land owners who are interested in placing land in conserving uses may need to focus greater attention on the continuous signup and the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP)." The CREP is a joint program of USDA and the states to address nationally significant but more state-specific environmental concerns related to agriculture use. About 22,000 acres have been enrolled in the CREP using the continuous CRP signup.

After accepting 5 million acres into the CRP in March, the program is only 5 million acres shy of the statutory limit of 36.4 million acres. With relatively little acreage due to expire in the next three years, the need to provide for joint federal-state conservation reserve initiatives and reserving 4 million acres for the administration's Clean Water Action Plan, future CRP signups probably won't enroll as large acreages as in the past, says Smith.

When Congress first authorized the CRP in 1985, the acreage limit was set at 40-45 million acres. Later, Congress lowered that to the current limit. But recently congressional efforts suggest renewed interest in increasing the 36.4 million acre cap.

Smith says that with a 45 million acre limit and assuming eligibility criteria did not change, the average erosion reduction factor of the environmental benefits index would decline most with increased acreage enrollment of highly erodible acres.

New enrollment under those conditions likely would have less erosion reduction benefits compared to other environnmental benefits included in the EBI. However, Smith says, with more acreage placed in conserving uses, total erosion benefits still would increase.

"Under a program expanded to 45 million acres, allowing crop land with lower EBI scores into the program increases enrollment in all regions," he continues. "Assuming potential bidders would indeed bid, model results indicate that no radical shifts in the geographic distribution of acreage would occur, although relatively more acreage would be enrolled in some regions compared with others."