If you didn’t know (maybe under a rock) the government was shut down, or in partial shutdown whatever the correct terminology is. This meant that the USDA offices were closed, with the exception of a few FSA employees coming in on a limited basis the last few weeks, and without open offices there hasn’t been the ability for either USDA staff or producers to come together to work on anything conservation.
I won’t say we have gotten used to it with the Farm Bill extensions, but it has seemed to be normal territory to be limited on conservation work come October 1st with now our third extension of the 2018 Farm Bill. For those of you unaware, when a Farm Bill expires FSA loses the authority to enroll new CRP. When we are in a Farm Bill year, we can for the most part work on CRP all year round, but we are going to enter into our third year (assuming this year will look like the last two) of limited enrollment periods for Continuous CRP, which used to be the type of CRP we could sign up most of the year. This is the type that tree CRP practices fall under, and the limited enrollments is why we have to plan way ahead if we want to plant CRP trees.
To be more clear here, with the vote to end the shutdown, congress included an extension to Farm Bill programs like the ones under the conservation title. I don’t know if I can speak for anyone else on this side of the desk but I certainly wasn’t anticipating that an extension was in the works. I guess you can call this a good thing as it reauthorizes the conservation side of the Farm Bill earlier than last year and definitely earlier than I expected we would get one this year. I thought we would be lucky if they were debating it in January! It’s not the best news as that would be a new Farm Bill. Hopefully, and I mean hopefully this will speed up the clock on when we get moving on CRP enrollment as I don’t know how much closer we could have gotten it than last year.
Why this matters is that just because an extension is in place doesn’t mean that CRP is just up and running. These extensions that take place months after the Farm Bill expires on September 30 set the process back significantly. FSA has to have time to figure out how they are going to handle the enrollments for the year. The end of September 30th is always set so every day that goes by they aren’t able to get to work on that is obviously another day lost. So instead of having that full year we are already almost 2 months behind. Complicating things is that CRP enrollment is close to the acreage cap. If you are new to this column you might think that is a good thing with a 27 million acre cap but sometime soon, I will be writing how our traditional CRP acres dropped again. I’m just trying to wait patiently for the specific state acre reports.
While we cannot officially work on CRP, I still encourage you to have that on the front of your brain if you are thinking about enrolling new CRP or have some coming up for re-enrollment. Just because you cannot have FSA work on the paperwork doesn’t mean you can’t work with your Pheasant’s Forever Biologist to go over things. I find there are still a lot of general things about CRP that landowners and producers are unaware of. I cannot hammer on this enough, maybe you get sick of hearing it I don’t care but every field has marginal ground. Some fields it’s a majority some its only a few acres but they all cost producers money, and they don’t have to. Please do yourself a favor and at least look into options for those acres. Whether that is CRP or something you do on your own.
I don’t have a crystal ball but I would guess that by March we should at least know how the CRP calendar is going to look, maybe February but that is a complete guess at this point. As I referenced earlier I am optimistic on a sped up time frame from last year.
Since the offices are open, now there is no excuse to get in and plan your trees if you want them for 2026 and I mean like tomorrow. Heck even if you are thinking 2027 still come in. If you don’t get the vibe from how often I write about this, it never fails that we have people coming to us in February, March, and even April wanting to plant shelter belts for the coming spring and that just doesn’t work.
If you have thought about applying for NRCS programs like CSP and EQUIP, all NRCS staff are back in the office and are available to assist you. If you are a producer and have no idea what those programs entail then you definitely need to be in asking questions. I know harvest is wrapping up for many of you so the excuses are gone. There isn’t a better time for most of you producers than right now to come in and see how the folks on the conservation side can help you be more profitable. That is our first objective, to help you and your operation be more profitable, and more financially sustainable.
Now the doors are back open so we can get back to that mission!