Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, raised concerns about the implementation of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the threat it poses to beginning farmers' access to land during a Senate hearing Thursday.
Leaders of conservation programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as producers, testified at the Senate Agriculture Committee's hearing on the future direction for the 2018 farm bill's conservation programs. While questioning the witnesses, Ernst quoted an Iowa constituent who was outbid by the USDA's CRP rental rate by $100 dollars per acre.
"I've heard similar stories from across Iowa about CRP outbidding cash rents on productive farm ground and it greatly concerns me," she said.
Ernst noted that CRP is intended to protect marginal land, but producers are increasingly taking farmable land out of production in response to opportunities from conservation programs with "misaligned incentives." She questioned the logic behind using taxpayer dollars to idle whole farms through CRP.
Adam Sharp, executive vice president of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, testified in support of working lands conservation programs and made it clear to the committee that his organization "promotes working lands programs over retirement land programs."
Steve Horning of Horning Farms in South Dakota called for raising the CRP acreage cap to 40 million acres, but neither he nor any senators addressed how this increase (estimated to cost billions of additional taxpayer dollars) would be paid for nor how sustainable working lands programs would be affected to accommodate such a drastic increase in land-retirement programs. View NGFA's CRP priorities here.
