Land Retirement Programs May Induce Enduring
Land-Use Changes
Ruben
N. Lubowski and Michael
J. Roberts
Agricultural policies aimed at
improving the environment often rely on the voluntary
participation of farmers. Rather than buying land
or purchasing conservation easements that impose
a permanent land-use restriction, the government
typically “rents” environmental benefits
from farmers by offering payments for temporary
changes in land use or management. Longer term impacts
from such programs are uncertain since farmers may
choose to adopt less environmentally friendly land
use or management practices once their payments
cease. In practice, experience with the Conservation
Reserve Program (CRP) indicates environmental benefits
from the program often continue after payments stop.
The CRP offers annual rental payments
to farm owners or operators who voluntarily stop
crop production on eligible land under 10- to 15-year
contracts and instead plant environmentally beneficial
grass or tree covers. The CRP pays about $1.8 billion
per year to retire almost 37 million acres (an area
larger than Iowa). Benefits from the program, including
increased recreation (see, Agritourism
Offers Opportunities for Farm Operators),
enhanced wildlife habitat, soil conservation, and
other environmental services, have been valued in
excess of these costs.
ERS analyzed trends in land use
in the contiguous 48 States during periods before
and after the first CRP contracts expired between
1995 and 1997. Findings indicate that approximately
38 percent of the land that exited CRP between 1995
and 1997 was not converted back to crop production
in 1997. Exiting CRP lands not returned to crop
production tended to remain in pasture, range, or
forests—uses with land covers and environmental
benefits similar to those contracted under CRP.
County-level predictions show
wide regional variation in the likelihood that parcels
would return to crop production after exiting CRP.
Influential factors include the profitability of
crop production and other land uses in a local area,
the quality of the soil for crop production, and
the land cover adopted under CRP. For example, land
parcels that had established trees and wildlife
covers under CRP were less likely to return to crop
production than land covered with native grasses
or legumes. Given the high current market prices
for corn and other commodities, a higher proportion
of land exiting CRP today may go back into crop
production. Nonetheless, the rate of cropland conversions
of land exiting CRP today would likely show the
same geographic pattern displayed in the 1997 data.
This
finding is drawn from . . . |
| “Enduring
Impacts of Land Retirement Policies: Evidence
from the Conservation Reserve Program,”
by Michael Roberts and Ruben Lubowski, in
Land Economics, 83(4), November 2007.
The
Conservation Reserve Program: Economic Implications
for Rural America, by Patrick Sullivan,
Daniel Hellerstein, Leroy Hansen, Robert Johansson,
Steven Koenig, Ruben Lubowski, William McBride,
David McGranahan, Michael Roberts, Stephen
Vogel, and Shawn Bucholtz, AER-834, USDA,
Economic Research Service, October 2004.
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