The Biden administration said Wednesday it will expand the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to leave land fallow. The program, created in 1985, is "meant to protect the environment by reducing agricultural runoff into streams and rivers, preserving wildlife habitats, and preventing erosion," H. Claire Brown reports for The Counter. "Today, the Department of Agriculture 'rents' about 21 million acres of farmland from landowners, typically for 10 years at a time—a tiny fraction of the total land farmed nationwide. In recent years, the number of acres enrolled in CRP has fallen, possibly because USDA’s rental payments have not been competitive with the open market."
USDA aims to get farmers to enroll another 4 million acres in the program, to bring it to its current limit of 25 million acres. "All told, the increased rental rates and expanded incentive payments—which pay farmers extra for growing buffer strips and promoting wildlife habitats—will increase CRP spending by about 18 percent, totaling $300 million or more in annual spending," Brown reports.
The program has drawn some criticism. Anne Schechinger, an Environmental Working Group senior economic analyst, noted in a recent report that many farmers don't renew their CRP contracts after a decade, and that many of the environmental benefits are gone as soon as crops are replanted on the land, Brown reports. Almost 16 million acres were removed from the program between 2007 and 2014 after farmers chose not to re-rent them to USDA, after the government had spent more than $7 billion preserving that land. Schechinger said "she’d like to see an expansion of the CLEAR30 pilot program, which rents land for 30 years at a time and requires farmers to implement water-friendly conservation measures. Other measures, like slightly higher payments for acreage that has been kept out production for one ten-year cycle, could further incentivize long-term conservation," Brown reports.