NGFA Urges Congress to Reform CRP During 2012 Farm Bill

• Grain and oilseed demand show no signs of abating.  Indeed, world demand for all grains and oilseeds has increased 30 percent over the last decade – or by 90 million metric tons – largely because of the economic expansion in Asia.  China’s imports of soybeans have accounted for 50 million tons of that growth.  “With the combination of biofuel demand and economic demand from China, the pressure on grain stocks is likely to continue,” the paper stated.  “Yield gains are not rapid enough to keep pace, and yield gains do not come without weather interruptions.”

• Several hundred million bushels of corn – perhaps within the range of 400 million to 700 million bushels – potentially could be produced in an environmentally sustainable way on land currently enrolled in the CRP.  Of the approximately 30.9 million acres currently enrolled in the CRP, about 14.6 million are located in the 12 main Corn Belt states, the paper noted.  About half of those 14.6 million acres are located in the high plains states of Kansas, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota.  CRP contracts representing only 1.6 million of those Corn Belt CRP acres are scheduled to expire in 2011.

• According to data from USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, U.S. harvested acreage of the 10 major row crops remained constant at 232 million acres during the past decade, while world harvested acreage increased by 169 million acres.  As a result, the U.S. share of the world’s harvested acreage declined by 1 percent since 2000-01 – to 11.1 percent. 

• The use of grain for biofuels has negated the rationale used previously that land-idling programs, like the CRP, were needed as a way to control stocks.  Further, the paper cited land-use policy constraints imposed by Congress under the Energy Act of 2007 that force food and biofuels to compete against one another for the United States’ prime cropland.  That occurs because the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under that law is required to count as “renewable biomass” (in the case of crops and crop residues) only those feedstocks produced on the estimated 402 million acres that was cleared prior to Dec. 19, 2007 and actively managed or fallow on that date when calculating whether the renewable fuel mandate (currently 36 billion gallons) has been met.  This puts off limits – at least when calculating whether the renewable fuel mandate has been met – roughly 584 million acres of grassland pasture and range, as well as 134 million acres of grazed forest land. 

A copy of the congressional letter and a list of signatories is available by clicking here.  Click here to access a copy of the 20-page ProExporter Network client paper that accompanied the letter.