MINNEAPOLIS, Feb. 16,
2013—Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that the U.S. Department
of Agriculture (USDA) will conduct a four-week general sign-up for the
Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), beginning May 20 and ending on June 14. CRP
has a 27-year legacy of protecting the nation’s natural resources through
voluntary participation, while providing significant economic and environmental
benefits to rural communities across the United States. Under Secretary
Vilsack’s leadership, USDA has enrolled 11.7 million acres in various CRP
efforts.
“Since the 1980s, the CRP program
has established itself as a benchmark in voluntary conservation efforts,
providing American producers with assets to address our most critical resource
issues,” said Vilsack. “Last year, during one of the worst droughts in
generations, the CRP proved vital in protecting our most environmentally
sensitive lands from erosion. Emergency haying and grazing on CRP lands also
supplied critical feed and forage for livestock producers due to the drought.
And the program continues to bring substantial returns to rural areas,
attracting recreation and tourism dollars into local economies while sustaining
natural and wildlife habitat for future generations.”
Additional sign-ups for continuous
CRP programs—such as Highly Erodible Land Initiative and Initiative to Restore
Grasslands, Wetlands and Wildlife—will be announced in spring 2013.
Currently, about 27 million acres
are enrolled in CRP, which is a voluntary program available to agricultural
producers to help them safeguard environmentally sensitive land. Producers
enrolled in CRP plant long-term, resource-conserving covers to improve the
quality of water, control soil erosion and enhance wildlife habitat. Contracts
on 3.3 million acres of CRP are set to expire on Sept. 30, 2013. Producers with
expiring contracts or producers with environmentally sensitive land are
encouraged to evaluate their options under CRP.
Producers that are accepted in the
sign-up can receive cost-share assistance to plant long-term,
resource-conserving covers and receive an annual rental payment for the length
of the contract (10-15 years). Producers also are encouraged to look into CRP’s
other enrollment opportunities offered on a continuous, non-competitive,
sign-up basis and that often provide additional financial assistance.
Continuous sign-up dates will be announced at a later date.
Highlights of CRP include:
· CRP has restored more than two million acres of wetlands and
two million acres of riparian buffers;
· Each year, CRP keeps more than 600 million pounds of
nitrogen and more than 100 million pounds of phosphorous from flowing into our
nation’s streams, rivers, and lakes.
· CRP provides $1.8 billion annually to landowners—dollars
that make their way into local economies, supporting small businesses and
creating jobs; and
· CRP is the largest private lands carbon sequestration program
in the country. By placing vulnerable cropland into conservation, CRP
sequesters carbon in plants and soil, and reduces both fuel and fertilizer
usage. In 2012, CRP resulted in carbon sequestration equal to taking about nine
million cars off the road.
USDA continues to enroll a record
number of acres of private working lands in conservation programs, working with
more than 500,000 farmers and ranchers to implement conservation practices that
clean the air we breathe, filter the water we drink, and prevent soil erosion.
Since 2009, USDA has enrolled more than 50 million acres into the Conservation
Stewardship Program to incentivize the most productive, beneficial conservation
practices. And USDA’s work in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, the Mississippi
River Basin, and Gulf of Mexico are among 19 initiatives applying the most
effective conservation practices to increase agricultural and environmental
returns. USDA science is also helping to focus work in areas to reduce
problematic nutrients making it to rivers and streams by as much as 45 percent.
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