Economic Information Bulletin No. (EIB-215) 40 pp

January 2020

The Fate of Land in Expiring Conservation Reserve Program Contracts, 2013-16

This report analyzes the rate at which Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) lands have recently been reenrolled and, further, the use to which exiting land is put after it exits the program. The acres enrolled in CRP contracts as of 2012 and set to expire over 2013-16 totaled 8.1 million acres, 7.6 million of which are tracked in this report.

Errata: On December 4, 2020, the acreage in expiring Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contracts was corrected to 1.19 million in 2016. The share of land exiting CRP going into some form of crop production was corrected to 79 percent, and the share going into tree cover to 6 percent. The amount of land exiting general land that went to annual crops was changed to 56 percent, and land exiting continuous land that went to perennial specialty crops was corrected to 10 percent. The amount of tree-practice land that was the least likely to transition to some type of crop production (annual, specialty, or perennial forage crop use) after it exited the CRP was corrected to 18 percent. Lastly, the acreages shown in figure 7 were updated to correct an undercounting of roughly 188 acres of land that exited CRP over the study period. Data shown in table 1, appendix table 2, and appendix table 3 were also revised.

Keywords: Conservation Reserve Program, CRP, conservation, land use, Farm Service Agency, FSA, expiring CRP, fate of CRP land

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