CRP provides farmers with some certainty in the face of uncertain markets
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. The agriculture economy right now is reminding a lot of people of the 1980s Farm Crisis, when a combination of too much grain, the evaporation of international markets, rising costs, and overextended farm finances all reached a breaking point. At a September 2025 listening session hosted by staff of Arkansas’s congressional delegation, hundreds of farmers showed up in the middle of harvest to share their fears of bankruptcy. The Farm Aid concert — which was intended as a one-time safety net for farmers in crisis and grew into an annual event — just recently hosted its 40th anniversary festival. Many of the modern concerns raised by farmers at the event’s Farmer Forum echo those of the original 1985 Farm Aid. In grain market Facebook groups and farm town diners alike, you’ll hear anxiety about markets, rising costs, and calls for the government to take action to save farmers from disaster. The situation is tough, but it would be a lot tougher without an often-overlooked program: the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP).
2025 also marks the 40th anniversary of CRP, a program run by the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm Service Administration (FSA) that pays farmers to take land out of production for 10 to 15 years. When it was created, CRP was seen as a solution to two problems: poor conservation outcomes and the overproduction of certain commodity grains, leading to lower prices for farmers. The program’s original focus was on highly erodible lands that were in crop production.
Farmers of all scales and types of operation can benefit from enrolling in CRP, but commodity farmers in particular have a lot to gain by enrolling. This is because CRP is not only a conservation program, but it can also serve as a type of supply management program. Because overproduction of commodities can be a factor in low prices paid to farmers, taking some land out of production can help balance out the market. During the Farm Crisis when CRP was created, prices for grains such as wheat and corn crashed from highs in the late 1970s and early 80s to record lows by the mid-80s. This price crash happened in the aftermath of the rapid upscaling of farm size and the realization of Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz’s “plant fencerow to fencerow” and “get big or get out” policies. Wheat went from an annual average price of $4.57 per bushel in 1980 to $3.26 in 1985 and would sink further to $2.81 the next year. Now, grain prices are dropping again. According to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, for the past 10 years, farmers have had a difficult time matching their income to the cost of production.
CRP has evolved over the years to now include water quality-specific reserves, reserves for grasslands and grazing, as well as an incentive program to provide land access to new and beginning farmers. These changes reflect a broader understanding of conservation: while originally focused only on soil conservation and preventing erosion, changes to the program have incorporated conservation of wildlife and water as program goals. All the while, CRP has been a voluntary program that is enormously popular with farmers. According to recent polling, 67% of producers support the Conservation Reserve Program.
CRP as it exists right now is a 27-million-acre program. That means no more than 27 million acres can be enrolled at any one time, but the cost of the program can vary depending on rental rates offered to farmers and how many farmers choose to enroll in the program. For the first 10 years of the program, CRP allowed up to 45 million acres to be enrolled in the program.
The relationship between crop prices and CRP enrollment
Below is a chart showing CRP acreage enrolled each year since the program’s modern inception in 1985, along with the annual average price of corn and wheat, two common crops in states with high CRP enrollment. Trends in CRP enrollment involving 10-15 year contracts change more gradually than crop prices do, but there are some interesting data points to highlight. CRP enrollment increased dramatically as the program got started, then remained relatively steady for the next several years. There was a slight dip in enrollment as the first 10- and 15-year contracts expired, but relatively low crop prices in the early 2000s prevented a mass exodus from CRP.
Starting around 2007 and continuing until 2021, CRP enrollment began a steady decline. This was likely due to the combined factors of increased grain prices and the reduction of CRP’s acreage cap from a little over 39 million acres in the early 2000s to 24 million acres around the time of the 2018 Farm Bill. After years of lowering the acreage cap and some relatively low grain prices, the 2018 Farm Bill increased the cap to 27 million acres. An update is needed desperately.
When crop prices are low, farmers look to hedge their bets and find more stable sources of income. With CRP, there is certainty — there aren’t the booms of good crop years, but there also aren’t the busts. CRP builds economic resilience on top of environmental resilience and provides some certainty in the face of uncertain markets. And while there is maintenance involved with CRP land, once a farmer gets roots in the ground, it’s one less piece of land that needs a yearly loan and pricy inputs subject to the whims of the market. In theory, CRP payments should be a stable source of income for at least a decade, though when the government shuts down, that stability is called into question.
“Low Capability Soils”
There are proposals by Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee to focus CRP primarily on “low capability soils” — soils that might be more highly erodible and have lower yield potential. While a focus on low capability soils might reduce program costs by reducing payments to farmers (farms in counties with “good” soil receive higher CRP payments per acre than farms with “bad” soil), there are tradeoffs. We would likely see fewer acres enrolled in states like Iowa with “high capability soils” and likely more acres enrolled in states like New Mexico with “low capability soils.” Iowa, a state dealing with serious water pollution due to agriculture, is no less deserving of conservation than New Mexico.
There are benefits to conserving rich soils — including keeping more carbon in the soil and improving water quality. Without widespread conservation, the rich soils in places like Iowa will be bare more often, losing more carbon, and shedding more topsoil down the Mississippi River and into the Gulf of Mexico. There is a conservation need in every state in the country, and arbitrarily benefiting places with one type of soil over others means our conservation decisions are being made more by land prices than by conservation need.
When looking at where CRP dollars have gone, the playbook becomes clearer. According to the Environmental Working Group, since 1995, more CRP program dollars have gone to Iowa than any other state, at roughly $7.8 billion. The other states in the top five include Illinois, Texas, Minnesota, and Kansas. When looking at acres instead, the list changes — as of 2024, the top five states for acres enrolled in CRP are Colorado, South Dakota, Texas, Nebraska, and Kansas.
There have also been proposals to turn CRP into a dollar-based program rather than acres-based, meaning that there is a cap on how much money goes to farmers. As CRP rental rates continue to rise, this policy change would have the effect of reducing the number of acres enrolled in conservation. This would contrast with the current system, where there is an acre cap.
If policymakers choose to analyze CRP as simply an outflow of tax dollars, the temptation to cap payments or find ways to slow the flow of dollars to prime agricultural states is evident. But dollars on a page are never just dollars — these dollars lead to real conservation outcomes while providing certain income to farmers who would otherwise be riding the rollercoaster of the market with land that maybe shouldn’t be farmed in the first place.
Other risks to CRP
The 2018 Farm Bill end date has now arrived three times — starting in 2023 with the original expiration of the bill, and then again in 2024 and 2025 with the expiration of one-year extensions of that Farm Bill. Now, with the expiration of the second one-year extension and the simultaneous government shutdown, farmers have not been receiving CRP payments, nor have they been able to enroll in the program. Further interruptions to CRP threaten to degrade the program and erode trust among farmers.
The loss of staff at both FSA and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) also weakens CRP. FSA administers the program, while NRCS staff work with farmers to determine what CRP will look like on their unique piece of land. NRCS has already lost over 25% of its staff since January 2025, and FSA has lost roughly 17% of its staff in the same amount of time. This loss of staff means that when and if CRP does turn back on, farmers will face longer wait times, less direct interaction with staff, and more speed bumps on the way to doing what is right for their land.
In an even more serious threat, CRP is at risk of being eliminated entirely. In May, certain programs were removed from the Farm Bill and passed separately as a part of Republicans’ 2025 budget reconciliation bill. This was done in the name of bolstering the safety net for farmers, though the programs that were included in the budget bill, such as Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC) provide a safety net for only a small fraction of farmers across the country. While some conservation programs were included in the budget bill, CRP was notably left out.
The elimination of CRP was listed as a policy goal in the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025”. The document’s authors claim CRP is “overbroad” and that farmers should not be paid to “not farm their land.” What would the current farm economy look like with 27 million additional acres of mostly commodity crops in production? If CRP is eliminated, we will likely see those acres return to production in the coming years.
Who benefits from less land in CRP and more acres in production? If we see more supply of grain, which we likely will, it will depress prices further for farmers, often below the cost of production. This will likely mean more emergency bailouts. Ultimately, it is the corporate buyers who benefit from more acres in production and low prices — the Cargills and ADMs who sell grain on the global market, and the big meat and poultry companies who rely on ample supplies of low-cost corn and soy to feed animals. Who loses? Farmers, taxpayers, wildlife, water, and soil all across the country.
Conclusion
CRP plays an important role as a stabilizing force for farmers and their incomes while benefiting the environment. CRP doesn’t have to be the only income stabilization program we have for farmers. In times of crisis as farms at all scales risk filing for bankruptcy, closing and shifting more power to large companies, the U.S. needs policies that keep farmers on the land, with more money in their pockets while benefiting the land, water, wildlife, and environment. This is exactly the time to bolster programs like CRP, not weaken them. We need Congress to raise the cap on CRP acres and provide certainty for farmers who don’t have a lot of it right now.
See also: IATP’s Supply Management Page
Union of Concerned Scientists: Why planting too much corn hurts farmers – and the environment
Campaign for Family Farms and the Environment: Why we need an Agricultural Market Volatility Relief Program
