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Today, nearly 35 million acres of environmentally sensitive cropland are enrolled in the CRP. Total acreage hasn’t changed much since 1990, but the geographic distribution of enrolled acres has shifted. About half of current CRP land is re-enrollment of land originally enrolled between 1986 and 1992; the remainder is newly enrolled land. The distribution shifted eastward between 1991 and 1996 as new bid selection rules encouraged Corn Belt land enrollment. As original CRP contracts started expiring in 1997, enrollment shifted westward as commodity market conditions and bid selection rules led to increased enrollment in the Northern Plains and less
re-enrollment in the Southeast.