In my position I never like to see CRP come out of the program when the contract is up or see any grassland broke up. I do understand farming these areas in certain situations. Some of our pastures are go-back acres from like the Soil Bank days, and don’t have much diversity in them, so it isn’t the end of the world if we break it up with plans to plant some or all of it back to grassland. Of course, there are a great many fields of CRP where the whole field was enrolled. Included in that field there is undoubtedly some great soil,………….. and also undoubtedly some terrible soil.
Often when the contract is up for a CRP that has been in for 10 or 20 years, we get the itch to get back to farming it. So, when FSA sends out the offer to re-enroll, we decide to let it lapse or call asking what the new contract offer is and decide we can make more money farming it. We are looking at it as all or nothing. Either we enroll the whole field again or none of it. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see too many quarters driving around the area that are entirely made up of soils with Crop Production ratings in the 70s and 80s.
What I am saying is that we don’t need to have the take it or leave it mentality. Would I love to see our entire CRP fields stay in the program, of course but I also understand balance. I hate to be cliché, but we should farm the best and leave the rest. When your CRP is up for renewal you can change the acres enrolled. It’s not quite as simple as this but essentially there isn’t a size limit on acres that can be enrolled into CRP. It just depends on what practice we would re-enroll those acres into. It can be much easier explained in person, but for the purpose of this article there isn’t an acre minimum.
We see this all the time in the James River Watershed where we keep farming marginal saline acres because the whole field is profitable under corn and soybeans. Just as we would be more profitable by doing something other than farm the saline acres in those situations, we would be more profitable by not breaking those marginal acres that were in the expiring CRP contract.
I know there is the worry about driving around CRP or grass areas within a field. We can see these as inconveniences but with today’s technology are they really? Almost every piece of equipment today has shutoffs or the ability to apply variable rates. With the fact that you are actually allowed to drive through CRP for normal farming practices I will ask again, is it really inconvenient to increase your profitability?
If you are a landowner that rents your land out to a tenant, you may ask what does it matter to me? I can just go with the highest bidder, and it isn’t any skin off my back if they farm those unprofitable acres. That’s your prerogative as it’s your land but keep in mind the long-term value of that land, as the saline expands the value decreases. That’s right saline is constantly expanding, the more we plant corn and soybeans and spray off everything else, the more the salt that is carried to the surface. A recent trend that I have seen is that many producers now only pay rent on the acres that they plant. So, some years you get rent on the wet marginal acres but then more often you will not receive rental income as those areas are usually wet in the spring. This isn’t every tenant of course but it is something that I have definitely found interesting and something to consider when you are thinking of not renewing a CRP contract. Are you going to hurt your rental income potential by taking acres out of CRP that the producer may not pay rent on most years if not ever?
If you are looking to balance income and habitat then the marginal acres are a perfect target for us to keep grass. If your tenant is happier because they can be more profitable and you can have your areas to hunt, then that’s a win for everyone and hopefully can lead to a lasting relationship where you help each other out. After all, those marginal acres are why South Dakota has been the leader in pheasant hunting since the beginning.
It can be easy to picture a perfect square that we can farm with no interruptions, but that is a fantasy in our area. There can be diamonds in the rough, of course, I can’t think of any, but I suppose it’s possible. There are a lot of squares farmed, but if you look out on those is the entire field full of 200-bushel corn? Or are there spots (lots of spots) with less than 100-bushel or worse? I don’t gamble much but if I did, I would bet most of you will have the later situation on the expiring CRP fields you are thinking of giving farming another try on.