Conservation Reserve Program

Under the program, the government pays farmers to take certain agriculturally used croplands out of production and convert them to vegetative cover, such as cultivated or native bunchgrasses and grasslands, wildlife and pollinators food and shelter plantings, windbreak and shade trees, filter and buffer strips, grassed waterways, and riparian buffers.

The purpose of the program is to reduce land erosion, improve water quality and effect wildlife benefits.

[2] Although the roots of the program were established in the 1950s, advocates did not start pushing the program heavily until the 1980s, in response to more prevalent practices of the 1970s, whereby farmers increasingly began to cultivate "fencerow to fencerow", and remove native habitat and vegetative stands from the fields, which was perceived as having detrimental effects on soil, water, and habitat quality [2].

Whenever there is a new proposed Farm Bill, the CRP is a large focus due to a high level of public pressure and the program's perceived benefits.

The rationale was that this would allow the new vegetative cover and other management practices more time to become established and produce the desired benefits.

Additionally, this Farm Bill allowed the Secretary of Agriculture to provide up to 50% of the cost to landowners for installing conservation measures [7].

The Farm Bill of 1990 included a major change to the CRP by expanding the list of eligible lands to include marginal pasture lands converted to wetlands or established as wildlife habitat prior to enactment of the 1990 Farm Bill, marginal pasturelands to be devoted to trees in or near riparian areas, lands that the Secretary may determine causes an environmental threat to water quality, croplands converted to grassed waterways or strips as part of a conservation plan, croplands subject to an easement of the useful life of newly created wildlife habitat, shelterbelts, or filter strips devoted to trees or shrubs, and lands that pose an off-farm environmental threat or pose a threat of degradation of production due to soil salinity [7].

The Farm Bill of 1990 allowed limited fall and winter grazing on land enrolled in the CRP, it allowed "alley cropping" between hardwood tree stands in return for paying less money to the landowner, the 50% cost share was expanded from only vegetative cover to include hardwood trees, shelterbelts, windbreaks, and wildlife corridors, and the Bill allowed for land already in the CRP that had been converted to vegetative cover to be converted to hardwood trees, windbreaks, shelterbelts, wildlife corridors, or wetlands under certain circumstances [7].

Land was deemed eligible for CRP if it was cropped two of the last five years and meets at least one of the following requirements: had an erodibility index of eight or higher; was considered a cropped wetland; was associated with or surrounds non-cropped wetlands; was devoted to a highly beneficial environmental practice (for example, filter strips); was subject to scour erosion; was located in national or state CRP conservation priority areas; or was marginal pastureland in riparian areas [7].

Also for the first time, the bill allowed for management and cost-share incentives for thinning to improve condition of resources on the land containing trees, windbreaks, shelterbelts, and wildlife corridors [1].

Provided the land and the landowner meet the requirements, offers are automatically accepted and not subject to competitive bidding [10].

To be eligible for CRP continuous sign-up enrollment, a landowner must have owned or operated the land for at least 12 months prior to submitting the offer, unless: the new landowner acquired the land due to the previous landowner's death, ownership change occurred due to foreclosure where the owner exercised a timely right or redemption in accordance with state law, or the circumstances of the acquisition present adequate assurance to FSA that the new owner did not acquire the land for the purpose of placing it in CRP [10].

For Continuous CRP the land must be recognized as "marginal pastureland" that is bordered to a stream, creek, river, sink-hole, and/or duck nest.

CRP protects soil productivity by establishing conservation covers on at-risk land to reduce sheet, rill, and wind erosion.

The more common runoff materials from agricultural lands included chemical fertilizers, nutrient pollution (nitrogen and phosphorus), and sediments.