07/27/05 No general C.R.P. sign-up?

With all the talk about the future of the Conservation Reserve Program and how it will be shaped as part of the 2007 Farm Bill, one aspect of C.R.P. has not received a lot of talk. But it did have some landowners of certain C.R.P. contracts set to expire on September 30th thinking about the immediate future. JOHNSON: We have about 7,000 contracts or about 437,000 acres of C.R.P. that the contracts are up this year. The dilemma, according to Farm Service Agency Deputy Administrator John Johnson, is that U.S.D.A. does not plan to have a general sign-up for C.R.P. this year. So that put the landowners with expiring contracts in a quandary. That is until F.S.A. made the following announcement. JOHNSON: We are offering this one year extension which will allow these producers to maintain their eligibility for C.R.P. for another year, and then we do plan to have general sign up next year and they'll be eligible to offer their land at that time. The offer is good to C.R.P. participants with expiring contracts this year, and whose original contract with the extension will not exceed fifteen years. Local F.S.A. offices will notify eligible C.R.P. participants of the extension program, with the deadline to apply set for September Second. The next general C.R.P. sign-up is not planned until early 2006. Johnson cites that it is more cost efficient for U.S.D.A. to offer an extension and one sign-up rather than holding two sign-ups between now and the next Farm Bill. But he adds that there is another option for landowners wishing to enroll in C.R.P. JOHNSON: We have a number of practices that which we call continuous C.R.P. practices such as riparian buffers, and filter strips, and grass waterways and so forth, that are eligible under a continuous C.R.P. And producers can sign-up and enroll in those programs at any time. It's not on a competitive basis like our general sign-ups are. And so they can visit their local F.S.A. office to get more information about that at any time during this year, or next year for that matter. And again, those landowners planning to wait until the next C.R.P. general sign-up may wish to be advised that the proposed 2006 sign-up will be the only one planned during the remainder of the current Farm Bill, which is set to expire in September of 2007.