During the month of October, USDA will distribute more than $1.6 billion in annual Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) rental payments to producers enrolled in the program.

Since October is the first month of the federal fiscal year, all CRP annual payments are distributed during this month.  Producers use these payments to establish and maintain conservation practices such as removing environmentally sensitive land from cultivation, or protecting wildlife habitats on one’s agricultural land.

CRP currently honors 744,000 contracts on 416,000 farms, totaling 31.3 million acres reserved under the program.  Each of these farms will receive an average of $52.56 per acre in CRP rental payments, or an average of $3,955 per farm.  As these figures show, many farmers enroll multiple tracts of their land into the program, and are able to earn enough from the program to keep these acres reserved from regular cultivation.

The total CRP contract numbers breakdown as follows between larger whole field general sign-ups and smaller partial field buffer enrollments through the Continuous CRP or the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP): 342,000 contracts representing 26.7 million acres from general sign-ups and 402,000 contracts representing 4.6 million acres from continuous sign-ups.

To view a table listing all of the 2010 CRP rental contracts by state, click here.

Aside from its annual rental payments, CRP also makes non-rental payments throughout the year, including 50 percent cost share payments to reimburse for establishing and managing cover as well as incentive payments for enrolling eligible high priority conservation practices.

To read the USDA press release, click here.  To learn more about CRP from our Grassroots Guide, click here.