doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com CRP Program needs help

Nobody is getting rich off of CRP payments.

CRP helps put game birds everywhere not just on the CRP land.

Instead of belly aching go buy some land.

+10

There are probably a million examples of taxpayer funded subsidies to businesses, and there are outright Welfare Programs for those who do not work. ClapperZapper told us just a couple days ago that he was employed working on the design of gear shift linkages for General Motors, Chrysler, and John Deere. GM is a mammoth corporation that has gotten untold subsidies, tax breaks, tax abatements, etc. Then there was that little multi-billion dollar bailout to "save" GM from liquidation. Tens of millions of dollars has not been paid back, and never will. Is it fair to assume that CZ has benefited financially, if indirectly, from taxpayer funded hand-outs to GM? Or perhaps the earlier bailout of Chrysler? What did all of you who never worked for GM get out of the deal to give tax dollars to a corporation that spent the last 30 years moving assets and jobs out of this country?

Buzz, the states with "walk-in" (or "PLOTS", or whatever they choose to call them) programs offer different incentives to landowners. In all cases, one way or another, if the ground is already in CRP and they're getting a check from Uncle Sam, they get a little "sweetener" on top of that from the state. Re tax breaks, the state of Michigan runs a very large program (unrelated to CRP)--used to be a couple million acres, almost all in the UP I believe--called Commercial Forest. In return for allowing public access for hunting, landowners do get a tax break. Those CF areas are not signed or anything like that. But unless you've got houses, fences, or active agriculture going on, if it's forest land in the UP and there aren't any no hunting/no trespassing signs, you can hunt it.

People who didn't live in serious farm country when CRP got started probably don't remember that more than anything, to start with, the program had a goal of taking marginal land out of crop production in order to reduce an oversupply of commodities which had resulted in very low prices. Farmers going broke, banks foreclosing on them etc. Yes, it was also of significant benefit to wildlife, but it also kept a lot of farmers from going under. Brought the price of corn and other grains back up by reducing supply. And in 3 years, Iowa's pheasant harvest doubled: from what was then an all time low of a little over 700,000 in 1984 to almost 1.5 million in 1987. Now? We'd be real happy to hit that 700,000 mark again.

Larry, a good start would be to get rid of Roundup Ready which eliminates row crop weeds and bugs.. Talking with a 50 year farmer In SW Iowa about 5 tears ago, he had not seen a grasshopper in 4 years.

Funny you should mention the hoppers Daryl. The places I hunt in SD, Reservation land, are teeming with hoppers. Thousands of them and nothing but native prairie grass and cows for as far as the eye can see. Something to be said for the old methods and keeping roundup far from our environment.

Well, it's not because of Roundup Ready crops. I plant RR corn, soybeans and cotton, and see hordes of grasshoppers some years. Some springs they are so bad we have to spray just emerged cotton to keep it from being completely wiped out by grasshoppers.

Take it from a lifelong farmer ....... Don't listen to everything every farmer says. If he implied that glysophate (Roundup) got rid of grasshoppers he is a nut.

SRH

I have had a very similar experience.

It is a goat rodeo.

No question the program has problems. Early on, here in Iowa, it was not unusual for entire farms to be enrolled in the program. They all had erodible land, but the whole farm? Not in many cases. But, on the other hand, those places sure grew a lot of pheasants!

When the program changed, under the 96 Farm Bill, it really made a lot more sense in terms of making erosion the target. Stream buffers have done quite a bit to improve water quality in Iowa. But those buffers, while better than nothing, aren't nearly as good as entire fields taken out of production, as far as wildlife is concerned.