A program that rewards farmers for turning less-productive land into wildlife habitat is having a banner year, but that might not be the best news for the environment.
The Department of Agriculture is signing up so many farmers for the Conservation Reserve Program that the program may soon hit the 27-million-acre cap Congress set for it in the 2018 farm bill, said Ferd Hoefner, a farm policy consultant who’s worked with USDA conservation programs for years.
While the popularity of USDA conservation programs is good news, the CRP’s crunch appears tied to the department’s willingness to accept contracts that have less environmental benefit than in recent years, said Hoefner, who for years led policy efforts at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
“It is time to right size expectations about 2024 and 2025 enrollments,” Hoefner said in an email. “The alternative — full steam ahead to fill every last acre under the farm bill’s 27 million acre cap this year — would come at a huge cost to the environmental performance of the program.”
