Sign of things to come?
Many hopeful current reduction in CRP acreage only temporary
In poll after poll, a majority of hunters have indicated that the greatest threat to their sport today is loss of access to good hunting land. Yet acre by acre, hunting property continues to slip away.
As mandated by the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008, also known as the Farm Bill, the land cap on CRP was reduced from more than 39 million acres to 32 million. The Farm Services Agency (FSA), which administers the program through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reported about 35 million acres enrolled as of September 2008. By October 23, 2009, however, the acreage had dropped to 30,928,483.
A newer version of the revered Soil Bank, the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is slowly shrinking and with it the possibility that hunters across the land will continue to have access to millions of acres currently available to them. Perhaps more importantly to them, the loss of wildlife habitat is likely to translate into a reduction in quality hunting opportunities on adjoining non-CRP land.
The taxpayer-funded program, which was created by the Food Security Act of 1985, was intended in part to help avert ecological disasters caused by excessive farming practices and to provide islands of wildlife habitat in areas of the country where land was mainly put to work. At first, huge swaths of acreage were included in CRP as farmers and landowners saw it as a way to make money while serving a good cause.
Contract periods range from 10 to 15 years and offer landowners payments between a low of about $20-$25 per acre to a high of $100-$125 per acre, with an average outlay of about $50.82 per acre.
Pheasant Belt beneficiaries
The largest state in the Lower 48 also has the most land enrolled. Texas currently has 3.3 million acres in CRP, though almost 700,000 acres of that is scheduled to rotate out at the end of September 2010.
Montana, with 3 million acres, could see 410,000 acres be converted back into farmland next year. CRP extends to 49 states, with only Arizona not involved. Massachusetts, with 51 acres, is the smallest stakeholder of record.
Puerto Rico, a U.S. "protectorate" whose residents pay no U.S. income tax unless they work for the federal government or draw their pay from U.S. companies, nevertheless benefits from CRP as it does many other U.S. taxpayer-provided programs. More than 2,000 acres of Puerto Rican land is enrolled in CRP.
It's the prairie states where pheasants and waterfowl abound that arguably have the most to lose if CRP continues to shrink. In the Dakotas, Kansas and Nebraska wildlife managers are particularly watchful and apprehensive.
"We're very concerned about the future of CRP and what it will mean for South Dakota," says Mark Norton, Farm Bill and Hunting Access Coordinator with the South Dakota Game, Fish and Park Department. "We're working hard to keep CRP in our landscape. It plays a huge part in our wildlife management efforts, as I'm sure it does in other states where such activities as hunting are vital to the economy."
Steve Halverson, who manages his family's farm near Kennebec, S.D., is a typical CRP enrollee. Though most of his property and the land he leases is cropped with corn, about 600 acres are enrolled in CRP and planted with food plots and various native grasses. Besides the federal income, there's the revenue that the property generates for Halverson Hunts (www.halversonhunts.com), the Halverson family's pheasant-hunting operation.
"I've been telling our clients to enjoy the pheasant hunting this season, because this is as good as it's going to get; it will never be this good again if CRP slides away," Halverson said. "It [CRP] has had a tremendous positive impact on wildlife in the state, everything from deer to tweety birds. It was intended to return land to a more natural state and provide good wildlife habitat in the process. I don't think anybody would argue that it hasn't accomplished its purposes, but in the absence of that, what's going to happen?"
CRP doesn't require that a participant opens his land to public hunting, but that is often the case. In many states, CRP is tied to state programs whose goal is to provide public access for hunters and fishermen. An additional stipend that averages a few dollars per acre is paid to CRP landowners or, in some cases, farmers who aren't enrolled in CRP.
Colorado, for instance, includes about a quarter-of-a-million acres in its Walk-In program, which involves a $20 access fee; Kansas has more than a million acres enrolled in its Walk-In Hunting Program; South Dakota has more than two million acres involved (including about a million acres that aren't also enrolled in CRP), as does North Dakota, which has almost 3 million acres of CRP land. Texas created its own walk-in program long before CRP came into existence, but its hunters likewise benefit greatly from CRP supplements.
Some of the money used to underwrite the state programs comes from a fund established during the Bush Administration to pay landowners an additional $3 per acre to allow public access to CRP land. Of course, some landowners whose property rotates out of CRP might still make it available to hunters, but the incentive to improve its habitat or at least leave it fallow is no longer there. And as many hunters know, the choicest hunting properties frequently wind up being leased by others willing to pay top dollar for the same access privileges that CRP participants often provide freely.
Nobody happy now
As Halverson's rhetorical question suggests, there are no guarantees that the large blocs of land likely to rotate out of the Conservation Reserve Program won't be tilled and planted with row crops from fence to fence next spring. However, market forces play a large role in land use.
One reason why U.S. Congressmen and Senators from the Corn Belt didn't raise a hue and cry against the CRP cap reduction in the first place is because the price of corn started rising substantially as the 2008 Farm Bill was being packaged. It was thought that farmers would rather return their land to cultivation because of the ethanol boom that sent corn prices steeply higher.
That market leveled out, however, and farmers whose CRP contracts are due to expire soon are none too happy now, mainly because grain prices have dropped and they're paying property taxes on land without the benefit of a high-margin cash crop or CRP money.
Ethanol lobbyists are working hard to increase usage of that fuel additive and having the current cap on bio-fuels raised from 10 percent to 15 percent per gallon in petroleum-based fuels. If they succeed, corn will be king again, but the current political winds aren't filling their sails.
Simultaneously, farm lobbyists are trying to hedge their bets by having "flexibility" added to the next Farm Bill that will allow farmers to opt out before their contract periods end without having to pay back all the money they've earned to that point (as is the case now). If grain prices go through the roof, they want to be able to take full advantage quickly.
"It may be that we'll see a Farm Bill that has provisions from congressmen in the big farm states to increase CRP acreage while still giving farmers an escape clause," said an observer who wishes to remain anonymous. "They could have their cake and eat it, too.
"That's not to say that all farmers are going to push for that, but you never know how the politicians will handle it. I'm just saying something like that could really put some kinks in the process when the Farm Bill comes up again, in ways that we can't imagine right now. There are a lot of competing interests at work."
Conservation groups aligned with hunters such as Pheasants Forever, Delta Waterfowl and Ducks Unlimited are guarding against alterations to CRP in the 2012 Farm Bill that would dilute its effectiveness and long-term viability. The program is seen as an essential tool in the ongoing effort to conserve natural resources while still making them available to all user groups.
"Rather than see further reductions in the amount of acreage that CRP covers, we want to see it go in the other direction," said Anthony Hauck, public relations specialist for Pheasants Forever. "We want to see a new general signup effort, and move the number up to maybe 40 or 45 million acres."
Neil Shader, communications specialist for Ducks Unlimited, says that group is also committed to the future of CRP and having the acreage cap moved upward again in 2012.
"We're big proponents of CRP, especially in the Prairie Pothole region of the northern Great Plains," Shader said. "CRP and programs like it are a win-win situation for everyone. Among others, landowners benefit, wildlife benefits and hunters benefit.
"The Fish and Wildlife Service did a study a while back and concluded that, because of CRP, about two million birds are added to the fall flights each year. That in itself is a tremendous testimonial for the program, and there are a lot of success stories like that associated with CRP."
