Farmers and ranchers can re-enroll or extend their Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contracts set to expire in 2007 through 2010, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said today. The leader of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition applauded the decision.

"We're offering farmers and ranchers re-enrollments and contract extensions to take full advantage of the environmental benefits of this program," Johanns said. "Re-enrolling and extending these contracts is part of the President's plan to fully use the nearly 40 million acres of CRP to improve water quality as well as wildlife habitat."

USDA's Farm Service Agency (FSA) will use the Environmental Benefits Index (EBI) that was in place when the contracts were first written to determine who might be able to re-enroll or extend their CRP contract.

 

Ferd Hoefner of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition today praised USDA for not moving to blanket automatic re-enrollments, saying that is "a policy which would have eliminated the opportunity to improve the targeting and effectiveness of the program." "We would have preferred complete reliance on staggered contract extensions followed by competitive bidding based on an improved Environmental Benefits Index (EBI)," he said. "However, by limiting automatic re-enrollments to land with top scores on earlier versions of the EBI, USDA will ensure that most of the land currently enrolled will be competitively bid." Hoeffner did point out that a firm, numerical indication of USDA's intention to reserve sufficient CRP acres for conservation buffers through the Continuous CRP and the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) was missing from today's announcement. The Coalition has joined with many national farm and conservation organizations to ask USDA to reserve at least 7 million acres for the CCRP and CREP. "We hope that USDA will announce such a commitment in the near future," Hoeffner said. How EBI scores will factor in The EBI is a measuring system that assigns point scores to the contracts and then nationally ranks all CRP land enrollment offers. Several environmental outcomes factor into EBI point scores such as improving wildlife habitat, water quality, and air quality and reducing soil erosion. The EBI scores are based upon a 100 percentile that is divided into five ranking tiers. In the first tier, CRP producers ranking in the top 20% of the EBI can re-enroll their land in new contracts and farmers and ranchers with wetlands in this ranking can receive contract terms of 10- to 15- years. CRP producers ranking within the second tier, between 61-80%, can extend their contracts for five years. Farmers and ranchers ranking within the third tier, 41-60%, can extend their CRP contracts by four years. Those ranking in the fourth tier, between 21-40%, can receive 3-year extensions. Contracts ranking in the fifth tier of the 20% of CRP producers can extend their contracts by two years. In 2007, 2008, and 2009, a total of 26 million acres or three-quarters of the total reserve will expire. The bulk expire in 2007. Fifteen-year contracts expiring September 30, 2007 are not eligible for re-enrollment or extension. During the next several months FSA will update the CRP rental rates to better reflect local market rates for cropland on new contract re-enrollments and will review cropland enrollment limits on a county-by-county basis. This coming spring, FSA will write to CRP producers with contracts expiring September 30, 2007, to discuss whether those contracts are eligible for re-enrollment or extension. Farmers and ranchers will confirm their contract interests at that point and a compliance check will be necessary.