NASHVILLE – Acting Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services Michael Scuse announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will conduct a four-week Conservation Reserve Program general signup, beginning on March 12 and ending on April 6.

Conservation Reserve Program has a 25-year legacy of successfully protecting the nation’s natural resources through voluntary participation, while providing significant economic and environmental benefits to rural communities across the United States.

“It is USDA’s goal to ensure that we use CRP to address our most critical resource issues,” Scuse said. “CRP is an important program for protecting our most environmentally sensitive lands from erosion and sedimentation, and for ensuring the sustainability of our groundwater, lakes, rivers, ponds and streams. As always, we expect strong competition to enroll acres into CRP, and we urge interested producers to maximize their environmental benefits and to make cost-effective offers.”

Conservation Reserve Program is a voluntary program available to agricultural producers to help them use environmentally sensitive land for conservation benefits. Producers enrolled in Conservation Reserve Program plant long-term, resource-conserving covers to improve the quality of water, control soil erosion and develop wildlife habitat.

In return, USDA provides participants with rental payments and cost-share assistance. Contract duration is between 10 and 15 years. Producers with expiring contracts and producers with environmentally sensitive land are encouraged to evaluate their options under Conservation Reserve Program. Producers also are encouraged to look into Conservation Reserve Program’s other enrollment opportunities offered on a continuous, noncompetitive, signup basis.

Currently, about 30 million acres are enrolled in Conservation Reserve Program; and contracts on an estimated 6.5 million acres will expire on Sept. 30.

Offers for Conservation Reserve Program contracts are ranked according to the Environmental Benefits Index (EBI). USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) collects data for each of the EBI factors based on the relative environmental benefits for the land offered. Each eligible offer is ranked in comparison to all other offers and selections made from that ranking. The Farm Service Agency uses the following Environmental Benefits Index factors to assess the environmental benefits for the land offered:

• Wildlife habitat benefits resulting from covers on contract acreage;
• Water quality benefits from reduced erosion, runoff and leaching;
• On-farm benefits from reduced erosion;
• Benefits that will likely endure beyond the contract period;
• Air quality benefits from reduced wind erosion; and
• Cost.

During the past 25 years, farmers, ranchers, conservationists, hunters, fishermen and other outdoor enthusiasts have made the Conservation Reserve Program the largest and one of the most important in USDA’s conservation portfolio. The Conservation Reserve Program continues to make major contributions to national efforts to improve water and air quality, prevent soil erosion by protecting the most sensitive areas including those prone to flash flooding and runoff.

At the same time, Conservation Reserve Program has helped increase populations of pheasants, quail, ducks, and other rare species, like the sage grouse, the lesser prairie chicken, and others. Highlights of the program include:

• Conservation Reserve Program has restored more than 2 million acres of wetlands and 2 million acres of riparian buffers.
• Each year, Conservation Reserve Program 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.
• Conservation Reserve Program provides $1.8 billion annually to landowners – dollars that make their way into local economies, supporting small businesses and creating jobs.
• Conservation Reserve Program is the largest private lands carbon sequestration program in the country. By placing vulnerable cropland into conservation, the program sequesters carbon in plants and soil, and reduces both fuel and fertilizer usage. In 2010, the Conservation Reserve Program resulted in carbon sequestration equal to taking almost 10 million cars off the road.

In 2011, USDA enrolled 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.

U.S. agriculture is experiencing one of its most productive periods in American history thanks to the productivity, resiliency and resourcefulness of producers.

For more information on Conservation Reserve Program and other FSA programs, visit the Nash County FSA Service Center at 1006 Eastern Avenue, Room 103, Nashville, NC or http://www.fsa.usda.gov/.

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