CRP marked its 35-year anniversary in December 2020. Over the next year, FSA will highlight the impacts of the program that was created in 1985 and the many stewardship-minded farmers, ranchers and landowners who have participated over the years.
CRP is one of the largest private-lands conservation programs in the U.S. The program was originally primarily intended to control soil erosion and potentially stabilize commodity prices by taking marginal lands out of production. This Farm Bill program has evolved over the years, providing a variety of conservation and economic benefits from coast to coast.
CRP has:
- Prevented more than 9 billion tons of soil from eroding, enough soil to fill 600 million dump trucks.
- Reduced nitrogen and phosphorous runoff relative to annually tilled cropland by 95 and 85 percent respectively.
- Sequestered an annual average of 49 million tons of greenhouse gases, equal to taking 9 million cars off the road.
- Created more than 3 million acres of restored wetlands while protecting more than 175,000 stream miles with riparian forest and grass buffers, enough to go around the world 7 times.
- Benefited bees and other pollinators and increased populations of ducks, pheasants, turkey, bobwhite quail, prairie chickens, grasshopper sparrows and many other birds.
Producers interested in enrolling or re-enrolling their land in CRP can learn more on the CRP webpage or in the January 4, 2021 news release.