Page 7 - SDWF Out of Doors

Out of Doors 7 May - July 2023

Impacts are bigger than just the land Lessening Efficiency for Conservation Act in April. The bill would

CRP also encourages South Dakota to claim ownership of its downstream ensure the permanent installment of SAFE under CRP, similar to the
impact on neighboring states, Bauman said. CRP Improvement Act.

“If you want clean water, you don’t want it to run off a soybean field. You • U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., proposed the CRP Amendments Act
want it to soak into the ground. If it goes into the ground, it’s a filter. The in April, which would expand CRP to include a subprogram for the
ground becomes a filter. If (water) runs off the ground, the ground becomes conservation of citrus agricultural land.
a source of pollution,” said Dennis Hoyle, a third-generation Edmunds CRP’s beginnings: ‘There were farmers that … just quit’
County farmer and long-time CRP landowner. CRP got its start with the Food Security Act of 1985.
Hoyle, who has been a board member of the South Dakota Soil Health Throughout the 1980s, the U.S. agriculture industry suffered a farming
Coalition for eight years, has witnessed the difference in CRP soil firsthand.
crisis. Many farmers fell into debt as the country experienced a suppressed
After a heavy rainfall, he drove through his neighborhood and found sloughs farm economy, high interest rates and inflation, Bauman said.
filled with water that had run off the fields and into the wetlands. When he “There were farmers that sold out, just quit. The farm crisis got its name
stopped by a section of his CRP land, he encountered a much different scene.
legitimately. It was tough,” Hoyle said. “I heard of a few farmers that went
“I could have walked through that slough. I barely got my socks wet. Because around behind the barn and didn’t come back.”
(the water) stayed put. The land absorbed it,” Hoyle said.
Hoyle recalls buying a tractor and financing it at a 9% interest rate around
Rehabilitation, wildlife conservation and education motivated Eck to enroll 1979. A year later, the interest had risen to 19%.
in a 15-year CRP contract.
“Giving up was never an
“Along the way, there’s always something that we can learn from the land and option. This is all I wanted to
so it’s important. I think that’s how I see it as an educational tool,” Eck said. do. When I was 3, I decided
Conservation Reserve Program not without its critics what I was going to do, and
I’ve done it,” Hoyle said.
While many conservationists support CRP for its environmental effects,
some critics say the program has several downfalls. Hoping to alleviate their
financial burdens, some
A 2012 research paper published by the Council on Food, Agricultural & farmers planted more crops,
Resource Economics, or C-FARE, notes that many of the studies on CRP’s from fence row to fence row.
economic impact on rural communities occurred during the first 10 years of
the program. “So if you’re a producer, if
you’re a farmer, the only way
Several of the studies the paper lists from the 1990s found that CRP had you think you can dig yourself
negative impacts on rural economies. A bee lands on a delphinium near Caroline out of that hole is to produce
Eck’s house near Watertown. (Photo:
One of the studies analyzed the “median household income, poverty Abbey Stegenga / SD News Watch) more. And it wasn’t working,”
and population” of 19 southwestern Minnesota counties that had 15% of Bauman said.
their land in CRP in 1998. The report suggested that “CRP enrollment is In an effort to increase production, many farmers plowed and planted land
associated with lower median household incomes and lower populations in that previously went unfarmed because it was lesser quality cropland.
farming-dependent counties.” “When you start breaking and farming what you might call marginally
More recent concerns with CRP center around the fact that CRP takes productive lands, you have two things going against you: you have much
cropland out of production. As a result, some say the program also takes higher input costs to produce that crop and then you’ve got the threat of
away farming opportunities from young producers. lower yield,” Bauman said.
At a House Agriculture Subcommittee hearing in May, Republican U.S. Rep. Marginal lands are likely to include slopes and hilltops, be erosion prone or
Brad Finstad of Minnesota said young farmers in his state have told him have low-land drainage, he said. The establishment of the CRP program
that higher rental rates cause competition between the federal government attempted to place marginal land back under a perennial cover to reduce
and beginning farmers looking to rent land. erosion, soil loss and overall production, Bauman said.
Research from the University of Florida says some opponents of CRP CRP’s introduction entices landowners
believe the program’s budget should be cut to help decrease the federal
budget deficit. At the time of the first CRP sign-up, the program paid double what rent
paid, Hoyle said.
South Dakota’s annual CRP rental payments totaled nearly $104 million
in 2022. The national total reached $1.7 billion that year, according to the “My dad has always been conservation minded. And he thought, ‘Okay,
USDA. here’s a chance we can rest our land, be good for wildlife and get paid at

News Watch contacted six people who may have had concerns about CRP a profit,’” he said.
but received only one response from someone who would not speak about CRP’s infancy was largely successful, as the program had more than 32
it on the record. million acres enrolled by 1990. With marginally productive land and input
Other CRP-focused bills proposed costs higher than normal, an option to not farm that land again enticed
farmers to enroll in CRP, Bauman said.
With 2023’s status as a farm bill year, Midwestern legislators aren’t the only “And then I suppose the reality is the non-permanence of it. That knowing
ones looking to improve CRP: that 10 or 15 years down the road, if you really felt it was important to

• U.S. Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa., introduced break that grass back out, I guess that probably appealed to some people,”
the CRP Reform Act in May. The legislation would ensure CRP focuses Bauman said.
on enrolling highly-erodible land rather than highly-productive land. It Nearly 38 years later, proposed legislation could ensure the program
would also cap the total number of CRP acres at 24 million for the 2024- continues to support landowners and their acres.
2028 fiscal years, down from the 27 million acre cap of 2023.
“I don’t know that (the bill) is going to save any small town or family farm,”
• U.S. Reps. Kim Schrier, D-Wash., and Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., Hoyle said. “But CRP is good for wildlife. It’s good for the soil, good for the
introduced the Eliminating Needless Administrative Barriers environment, so there’s a benefit there.”