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

Folks:

This may resonate with those of you who appreciate the outdoors and hunting. A call or email to our congress and senate offices can help.

The CRP program needs support from farmers and hunters alike. Here are the numbers per the agriculture bill 4-13-16.

Funding Cut - FY2017 - 451 million

Acreage 1985- 2008 39 million authorized
Acreage cut 2014 27.5 million
Acreage cut 2015 25 million
Acreage cut 2016 24 million

CRP land provides soil conservation, sustainable agriculture and better hunting experiences for all of us.

If 14 million hunters supported the program/$32 each, it would make up the 451 million shortfall. One tank of gas.

Info
www.sustainableagriculture.net

Thank you




Thank you.

Signing up for the CRP is an experience in itself. All of my land is within a quarter mile of a circuitous creek. I am required to always have a current highly erodible farming plan on file. And yet when I tried to enroll some land in the CRP, I was told it didn't meet the highly erodible land minimum requirement.

CRP is an incredibly important private lands program for the production of pheasants, sharp-tailed grouse, gray partridge, upland nesting waterfowl, turkeys, deer, and even sage-grouse.

It also does very important things for water quality and soil conservation.

I agree with Fourteener54... please engage your congressional rep and senators on this issue. Habitat is where its at!!!

Let me be contrarian for a moment.

Why should I have to pay you to not poison my water through your runoff?
Why should I have to pay you to protect wildlife for your private pleasure?

If there is a public access element, then we'll talk. Until then, I prefer my tax dollars be used to enforce the run off laws we already have.

Being endlessly told, "That's so and so's crp, we can't hunt that" wised me up on how it's being played.

I am paying for private game reserves.

CRP is a complicated issue. Lots of reasons why we've lost so much of it. Partly due to efforts to cut federal spending. Partly because a lot of farmers pulled out of it when they were able to do so--because, a few years ago, commodity prices (mainly corn, soybeans, and wheat) were very high. And they could make more growing crops than they got in a set-aside check from Uncle Sam.

Then there's the Renewable Fuels Mandate. Although there is no longer an ethanol subsidy as such, there is a requirement to produce so much ethanol to be blended with gasoline. And nearly all of that ethanol is made from corn.

Agree on the ag runoff (non-point source pollution) rules. Definitely need stricter enforcement. But although CRP acres overall are being reduced, the "permanent" CRP title--which includes stream buffers, and which allow most landowners with waterways that run through fields in which row crops are planted to establish CRP buffers--is open to continuous enrollment. Landowners receive more per acre for stream buffer CRP than they do for large field CRP.

If the Renewable Fuels Mandate is ever phased out--and it would make sense to do so given the price of oil and the potential for domestic oil production--you will see a HUGE push from the ag sector to turn CRP around and start adding acres rather than further reducing acres. As the ethanol industry stands today, if and when the Renewable Fuels Mandate goes away, corn prices will take a significant nosedive. And they are already very low compared to just a few years ago.

Public access to CRP won't happen. As a matter of fact, the only money landowners can make off CRP acres, in addition to their check from the govt, comes via charging for "recreational access" (like hunting and fishing). So if you have permission to hunt on CRP ground without paying for it, consider yourself lucky--because Farmer Jones could tell you "Sure you can hunt my farm. $100 per day per hunter."

Here in my Texas Panhandle county, checks are sent each year to China....they bought land here when the govt. started the CRP program and it's off limits to any hunters. Nope, ain't contributing to anything that limits access.

Some CRP is strictly private and other properties are open for hunting, just like any other property. All the surrounding country benefits from the birds raised on "private" CRP the same as on lands open to public shooting.

Texas may be a special case since so much of it is locked up for the benefit of private interests. Nevertheless the entire ecosystem benefits...Geo

I'm a little confused. I've been a participant before in CRP programs. CRP here mostly consists of longleaf pine "plantations". I did not renew my contract when it was offered to me last year because I wanted the right to sell baled pine straw off those acres, and it is forbidden if you are under contract in CRP. I took acres out of row crop production and abided by the rules and the government paid me $ per acre each year to do so, for the life of the contract. Just why should that entitle John Q. Public access to my, or anyone else's, privately owned land?

There is a little known program in Georgia that will furnish hatchery fingerlings to pond/lake owners, free of charge, if ........ they will sign an agreement to allow the public access to that pond/lake. Guess how many participate? No such stipulations are in CRP contracts, that I have ever heard of. If someone thinks there should be, they should lobby Washington to get it done, not accuse the landowners of "playing" the system.

SRH

Here in Montana we know how important residual grass structure is to most ground nesting birds. If eggs and chicks survive predation (and dense grass overstory is the most common correlate of nesting and brood success) then pheasant, grouse, and upland duck species thrive. If this happens to be CRP acreage where these bird produce best, their populations frequently overflow onto surrounding public lands or even distant wetlands (which are generally widely accessible to hunters). Farmers win, bird populations win, and hunters win, here in Montana anyway.

Spot on, Stan. There's also the fact that quite a few states with "walk-in" programs--public access to private land--encourage CRP by paying the landowner an additional fee, on top of the check he gets from DC, if he will allow public hunting. That gives the landowner a nice option if he does wish to participate in the walk-in program while giving him an extra incentive to keep his land in the CRP. But accepting CRP $ should not REQUIRE a landowner to permit public access.