By STAN MADDUX

Indiana Correspondent

WASHINGTON D.C. — USDA has put a temporary freeze on accepting new offers from most farmers wanting to take part in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).

CRP, administered by the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, pays eligible farmers yearly rent for removing environmentally sensitive land out of production and planting species that will improve environmental health and quality of the ground.

Steven Peterson, acting FSA administrator, said the decision was made to avoid exceeding the CRP’s 24 million-acre cap, a statutory provision of the 2014 farm bill. Current enrollment in CRP nationwide stands at 23.5 million acres and total payments for 2017 exceeded $1.6 billion, he said.

No date has been set for resuming new CRP consideration but the suspension will be lifted at some point during the 2018 fiscal year, officials said. Peterson said all pending applications submitted prior to Sept. 30 will be approved, though, except for those made under the Pollinator Habitat Initiative because PHI has already met its acreage enrollment goal.

He also pointed out the USDA will continue to accept new offers for the state-specific Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program and CRP Grasslands enrollment.

Offers to participate in CRP received after Oct. 1 will be subject to fiscal year 2018 rental rates already adjusted to reflect current market conditions after reviewing the latest USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service cash rent data, officials said.

Under CRP, a contract with a landowner runs 10-15 years. CRP pays farmers and ranchers for taking sensitive lands susceptible to erosion out of production and planting certain grasses, shrubs and trees to replenish soil, improve water quality and increase wildlife habitat.

According to USDA, the CRP was first signed into law by President Reagan in 1985 and is one of the largest private-lands conservation programs in the nation. Chris Hurt, an agricultural economist at Purdue University, said the incentive for farmers to take part is collecting payments at least equal to what growing crops on the land would bring.

He said land accepted into the CRP is generally prone to erosion and a source of sediment filling ditches, lakes and streams that later have to be dredged. The ground is also not the best for food production. “It’s fragile lands that are potentially erosive, and that has some value for society to not have in production.”

Hurt said another purpose is to restore topsoil to land that might need to go back into production at some point to feed the world’s growing population. “That will be a reserve that will be there, should we need it,” he explained.

He believes the acreage cap is exhausted because of payments being more attractive than what can be produced on marginal ground, with crop prices so low. Another reason for higher enrollment might be farmers looking for a more stable revenue source as they approach retirement.

Hurt said profits from crops raised by a tenant farmer must be split, but the owner collects full payment on land taken out of production. “The reserve payment is enticing. It’s high enough as they evaluate their returns to say ‘that’s as good or better than what I can get farming it myself or farming it with a tenant.’”

According to USDA, the purpose of PHI through CRP is promoting a healthy honeybee population and a safe haven for all pollinators away from the pressures of modern agriculture. Honeybees are especially critical for producing more than one-third of the food products, and bee-pollinated commodities yearly account for $20 billion in U.S. agricultural production as well as $217 billion worldwide.

Bees and other pollinators like butterflies, moths, beetles, flies, wasps, birds and bats are necessary for pollinating more than 80 percent of plants in nature, according to USDA.