doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com CRP cuts IMPORTANT!

the USDA has announced that one of their policy options is to cut the CRP program, by 8 million more acres. This is unacceptable. FSA has asked for comments by the 19th of Oct. Here is what we need to ask for, and insist we get. 1) Cap the program at 40 million acres. 2)Call for a new CRP general sign up 3)Call for new authority to continue SAFE and CRP Upland bird buffer habitat programs. 4) call upon USDA to implement and "open fields" Public access program immediately. 5) Encourage USDA to enroll expired CRP into the grasslands reserve program and the Conservation Stewardship program.
Comments should be submitted to CRPcomments@tecinc.com and or http://www.regulations.gov by the 19th. Do it now!
And please lets not turn this into a politicized, whining session. ACT ACT ACT

LD, Could you please offer why the USDA wants to do this and what they believe the benefit would be? Would tell me the particulars in regard to the "expired" CRP land and its reapplication? Thank you

Done.

The really serious issue here is the possibility that the Feds may require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the ENTIRE CRP program! Partly due to the lawsuit filed against them last year concerning haying and grazing under "drought emergency" rules. Of course an EIS on the entire program is totally ridiculous. What negative environmental impact could it have, when you remove row crops and replace with grass? But if they go through with the EIS process, not only won't there be a new signup this year, but there won't be one next year either. Meanwhile, expiring contracts will not be renewed. Essentially everything on hold (except the "permanent" CRP provisions, like buffers) until the EIS is completed. If that happens, we will lose a lot more than 8 million acres.

All this CRP talk reminds me...I ain't recieved my CRP payment (for not farming) yet this fall. They must be broke too!...Geo

Cass Sunstein, just confirmed and 9/10 as head of the powerful Office of Information and Regulatory,hmmm just getting started I suspect.

Be sure to thank all those "fellow" hope and change hunters.

http://www.opposingviews.com/articles/opinion-keep-anti-hunting-cass-sunstein-out-of-the-white-house

The problem with the CRP is that it is NOT the Conservation Reserve Program as originally formulated in the mid-1980s. I have participated since the first bidding period. If I had the option to exit from my existing 10-year contract without penalty I would do so. The problem is that ONLY farmer-landowners have any REAL vested interest in setting aside their privately-owned productive farmland in long-term conservation practices...meanwhile, everybody and his mother (meaning little old ladies in tennis shoes) want their thumb print on the program.

Going back a few years, I would receive a nasty letter from the USDA every late-June telling me that if I failed to mow my noxious weeds by the first of July in compliance with state law, the government would fine me and take away all the prior year's rents and tie me on the railroad track. Then out of the clear blue I started getting letters telling me that if I mowed my noxious weeds on my CRP before August 1st the same penalties would be levied. Thus a problem: Noxious weeds like Canada thistle head out by the 4th of July. and if not cut go to seed and spread the problem all over the neighborhood (hence the local noxious weed laws). What to do???

Enter the little old ladies in tennis shoes who have as their "do-good" contribution to the decline of common sense the crusade against townships, counties, and states mowing the sides of the roads where they believe the deer and antelope, rabbits and raccoons, pheasants and quail ought to play. These aged nutcases lost their tall-grass-on-the-side-of-the-road battle and have since gone to war with the farmers as "whistle blowers." Using the Freedom of Information Act they obtain the lists of farmers with CRP acreage and patrol the county roads looking for some hapless farmer who, incidental to mowing his non-CRP weeds, goes after a patch of thistle on his CRP land. And how did this come about?

Pheasants Forever, using the $$$ clout generated by their fund raising banquets, convinced the regulators in Washington that farmers are stupid "evil doers" who absent the regulatory 180 degree about face on noxious weeds, would go out and do "recreational mowing" to the detriment of nesting pheasants, as if $200,000 tractors don't depreciate as a function of running time; as if diesel fuel didn't cost real money, and as if farmers had nothing to do with their time but mow fields like they were suburban lawns. Thus Pheasants Forever bit the hand that fed...and continues to do so...and Last Dollar says:

"...please lets not turn this into a whining session..." as he comes on here whining for his self-aggrandizing political agenda, such like:

"...3) Call for authority to continue SAFE and CRP upland bird buffer habitat programs..." this being the buzz words for Pheasants Forever telling farmers how to manage their own CRP land; and

"...4) Call upon the USDA to implement an "open fields" Public access program immediately..." Under this logic, we all should have squatter's rights to all those homes where the federal government is involved in a sub-prime workouts and/or FNMA loan guarantees.

Methinks that Pheasants Forever overbid its hand by having bit the farmer's hand that feeds, resulting, consequently, in pheasant hunters (the enemy) being denied hunting access by farmers who know how the Catch-22 mowing regs came into being. Last Dollar's call to lobby for an "open access" Public access program (whatever exactly that means) is grasping for straws. The USDA is not going to tell landowners that they must open their land to interlopers with guns...if anyone thinks this is going to happen perhaps I can interest you in some ocean-front land I have for sale here in Illinois...or maybe a bridge in Brooklyn.

Now let me tell you about Quail Unlimited (QU): These people got to the regulators with their half-baked agenda and put their thumb print on some of the most idiotic regs in the history of government in the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave." Get this! After I bid some of my land into the CRP (at half of what it would rent for), the USDA changed the contract after the bargain was struck, and I was told to sign the one-sided revised contract or "suffer consequences."

QU got an ex-post-facto change in management practices retro-ed into the contract that required me to disc up 1/3rd of my perfectly good and long-established upland bird cover each year to supposedly benefit quail, and I was also supposed to burn off 20% of the cover each year. Why? Because this was considered good quail management in Georgia. My local USDA functionary asked the pointed question: "Who's going to put the fire out?" Yet I was told by the local USDA chief honcho that I would be fined if I didn't sign the bogus contract. Fortunately my credentials go beyond farming...and I was at our kid's place in Virginia when this was a hot topic.

Wife Nancy dropped me off at the Rayburn Building in D. C. and I had a "heart to heart" with my congressman. As a former lobbyist I had with me the usual documents that got circulated and a day later my phone started ringing...and the "poison pill" regs were withdrawn. I had the option to withdraw my bid because the USDA had, in effect, voided our contract by unilaterally changing it, but I elected to go ahead with it because I felt that my 82.5 acres were best used for side-hill conservation to prevent erosion and possibly nurture birds.

I get $75 per CRP acre ($6,188 each October) and the land would rent to my tenants for $150 if devoted to corn or beans or winter wheat. Thus some may see the CRP as paying me $6,188--others may see me giving up a like amount in the name of conservation. As I said above, if I could opt out of the CRP contract without penalty I'd do so, not because of more rent, but because of the grief of dealing with our USDA regulators/regulations and people like Last Dollar, who I suspect has none of his own dollars at risk. EDM

EDM, "Open Fields" has NOTHING to do with REQUIRING those enrolled in CRP to allow access to anyone and everyone. "Open Fields" is basically a federal program under which the Feds kick back money to all states which have similar programs. In other words, on top of what you get from Uncle Sam, the state (of either WI or IL, depending on which side of the line you farm) would approach you with an offer to essentially lease the hunting rights on your CRP acres. For which you would receive additional state dollars, on top of your CRP payment. But it is a strictly VOLUNTARY program where the landowner is concerned, like SD's "Walk-in Areas", ND's PLOTS, NE's CRP-MAP, etc. Nobody's holding a gun to your head to force you to open your ground to public access. Just offering you some additional $ to do so, in case you might be interested.

Here's one PF member who'd be strongly OPPOSED to any program which requires landowners to open their CRP acres to public access.

Here in the great state of Kansas, we have, currently, 3,100,681.5 acres enrolled in the CRP program. We stand to lose per the existing contract schedule, 1.7 MILLION acres over the next 4 years. No one can convince me that LOL in tennis shoes, greed, thumbprints, not withstanding that that is a good thing.1.7 MILLION acres of habitat loss , can you imagine? Here in Cheyenne County we have 46,161.4 acres enrolled. I have 5 quarters in the program, for which I get paid about 33.00 bucks per acre.Its going to stay in the program, as long as I am allowed to leave it there. Damning organizations like Pheasants Forever and Quail unlimited? Dont forget to add Ducks Unlimited, why those fools, as we speak, are finalizing plans, in the western part of the County, to convert some perfectly good pasture into a wetlands! How dumb is that? We also have in Cheyenne County 20,995 acres of PUBLIC, not GOVERNMENT owned Walk In Hunting. Most of which holds good bird populations, as a bunch of the regulars on this forum can attest. You see, We like hunters, we like wildlife, we have noxious weed inspectors. Thank God there arent very many people like the former lobbyist. No one out here out here would stand still for enforced access on our priviate ground, in most cases its given freely...

OK: I read all the finger pointing in the above posts by what does anyone intend to do about this Obama carbunkle Sunstein.
I remember the arguments from some here during the election that the Obama man wasn't interested in your shotguns he just wanted to get rid of those evil black rifles. Well dwell upon this description of where the wacko who will have control over the CRP program is coming from:
Jim

So what is wrong with Sunstein? Mr. Sunstein claims that, “we might ban hunting altogether, at least if it’s sole purpose is human recreation.” He has also indicated support for allowing lawsuits on behalf of animals, a right currently only extended to human beings.