Conservation Reserve Program Decision Aid

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) was first established by the Food Security Act of 1985 with the purpose of reducing damage to highly erodible soils and environmentally sensitive land. Since that time, the program offered annual rental payments and cost-share assistance in exchange for producers taking their cropland out of production and establishing long-term conserving covers. Contracts have been for a minimum of 10 years or a maximum of 15 years. Annual program enrollment varies by year but has generally been more than 30 million acres.

The Food, Conservation, and Energy Bill of 2008 (2008 Farm Bill) reduced the maximum cap on CRP acreage from 39.2 million to 32 million acres. As a result, landowners whose contracts recently expired and those with land in current expiring CRP contracts will find it more competitive to rebid acres back into CRP.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced General Sign-up 41. Sign-up 41 begins on March 14, 2011, and will continue until April 15, 2011.

In making the decision on CRP enrollment, producers should first take into account the feasibility of all available options. We have identified four general options for landowners to consider: re-enrolling land in CRP, putting land back into crop production, leasing land to a tenant to farm, or leasing the land for livestock grazing. This website is designed to assist landowners by providing per acre estimates by county of the financial consequences of each of these options.

Historical CRP cash rental payments are used as a proxy for the likely rental rates in the new sign-up. Each county has a different average rental payment determined by the Farm Service Agency (FSA) based on number of factors including the environmental benefits that would result from removing the land from production.

The second option is to put land back into production. To assess this option, the crop that was most likely to be planted coming out of CRP was identified by Texas Agri-Life Extension Economists for each of the 12 Extension Districts. Districts 1, 3, 4, 7, and 8 would be most likely to produce wheat. Districts 2, 6, and 12 would most likely plant cotton. Districts 10 and 11 would likely produce grain sorghum. District 9 would most likely plant soybeans. 2010 Texas Agri-Life Extension Budgets were used to estimate returns per acre. Dryland average yields (2005-2009), regionalized average prices (2005-2009), and county direct payment yields are built into the budgets. The budgets calculate an estimate for returns per acre. For counties where insufficient data was available, a district average budget is used. Note: these estimates do not include the cost of preparing the land for crop production. Estimates of those costs are included at the bottom of each budget.

Estimates of the potential landowner rental returns per acre that could be gained by leasing their land as cropland or pasture were provided by Texas Agri-Life Extension Economists. The estimates are averages across all counties in the district and could be higher or lower depending on many different land attributes.

Finally, if the user has any questions regarding this information tool, please contact Dr. Joe Outlaw at 979-845-5913 or his/her local Texas Agri-Life Extension Economist.