Future of CRP ?

Tomahawker said:
That also makes sense. However, these farmers didn’t hunt. I know this. Folks feel the pf guys are privately leasing the ground for themselves and I tend to agree. At this point if I see a pf sign i assume it’s in the good ole boys club.
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I bought some of those signs for a tenant once. He and I started a conversation about some things we might do differently with wheat stubble. I never thought we finished the conversation, but he implemented anyway. In short, he didn't spray the stubble. Of course it exploded with weeds and he became very worried about what the neighbors might think. Anyway, I bought the signs, had them shipped to him, and he put them up. I guess that way he could show his face in the coffee shop and blame the super-weedy wheat stubble on his crazy landowner (me). That worked for a while, but ultimately he couldn't take it anymore and mowed it all about 6"-8" tall in late september. We had pretty good hunting that year on the permanent cover. And you're right, no one was hunting that without me. On the other hand, PF had nothing to do with it.
 
It can always be the landowner is a member/sponsor/supporter of PF. I would guess it is maybe a 50/50 split on banquet attendees, who are actually hunters and those that aren't. A lot of landowners and folks who used to hunt support them. It takes more than just a few of the actual hunters to make these things work. I guess PF is like the teachers union here...not many are in the union, but all the teachers get the benefits the union negotiates for their members.
 
Tomahawker said:
That also makes sense. However, these farmers didn’t hunt. I know this. Folks feel the pf guys are privately leasing the ground for themselves and I tend to agree. At this point if I see a pf sign i assume it’s in the good ole boys club.
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About what I've seen here in KS and what I witnessed when I was on the board of a local group and volunteered etc.
 
SPUR60 said:
Nearly all drainage ditches in MN minus those built for specific flood control and storm water run-off projects are owned by the benefiting land owners and managed by a ditch authority or the county, with associated costs assessed to the land owners based on a determination of benefits. If your land does not benefit from a drainage ditch, you do not pay in for the maintenance costs.
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stand corrected.
 
Just got confirmation my EQIP application got accepted. EQUIP set aside is primarily a water quality program, the acres are small and need wetlands. This one is five acres and has a vertical intake on it. Those are the orange tile things sticking up in fields for those who don’t know. Every one of those should have a grass buffer around them.
This patch joins existing CRP so it isn’t just a little grass patch in the middle of a field. EQUIP is only 5 years, and it requires native seeding which being only five years is kind of a waste. Right now it is alfalfa/orchardgrass which is decent enough wildlife cover. I will have to destroy this and plant a native mix. The field this is in was due to be rotated to corn this year.
I was surprised it was accepted given the current environment, the NRCS person said the money was already in the system, just needed to be allocated. So I don’t know what that means going forward. Mine was ranked fifth, they took the top four but I guess someone declined to go ahead with theirs.
Anyway, I was pleased to hear.
 
A few years back when the last of the cows were sold, we looked into crp. We were told the ground needed to be cropped 3 out of 5 years. We had it in grass or alfalfa for 30 years. They told me I had to burn it down and plant row crops for 3 years. I found myself speechless and walked out of the office.
 
redcows said:
A few years back when the last of the cows were sold, we looked into crp. We were told the ground needed to be cropped 3 out of 5 years. We had it in grass or alfalfa for 30 years. They told me I had to burn it down and plant row crops for 3 years. I found myself speechless and walked out of the office.
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Yeah, I can see your point.

I think CRP has the requirement of row crops 3 of 5 years since they have a limited # of acres to enroll and want to focus on putting ground into CRP that is the most environmentally beneficial. I.e. Grass or alfalfa has a much lower chance of eroding soil than row crops. And, they also wanted to control row crop prices first most.

But still, it doesn’t make sense to reward row crop farmers by allowing them to enroll after 3 years whereas alfalfa farmers who were conserving their soil have to row crop (and go backwards in soil/conservation health) before they can enroll.
 
I’m not sure it is uniform across the country but alfalfa is considered an insurable crop here and counts towards cropping history for CRP eligibility. We always rotationally grazed our pastures, every five years we no tilled alfalfa into the old pasture and cut it for hay a couple years, then grazed it. Those fields were accepted into the CRP program.

Probably 2/3 of our pasture was accepted.
 
There you go. Looks like there’s a practice for grasslands CRP for pasture land or hay that you might be enrolled in, McFarmer?
 
SDinWI said:
There you go. Looks like there’s a practice for grasslands CRP for pasture land or hay that you might be enrolled in, McFarmer?
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No, we looked into the grassland program, it is more for the western states. In our area alfalfa is treated same as corn and beans for cropping history. If I had no tilled orchard grass into the pastures and treated it the same, the fields wouldn’t have qualified.

Interesting note. One 25 acre field was always divided into five, 5 acre paddocks. Three of them qualified and two didn’t, those three were recently renovated by no tilling alfalfa into them, the time for renovation hadn’t come for the other two.
 
McFarmer said:
I’m not sure it is uniform across the country but alfalfa is considered an insurable crop here and counts towards cropping history for CRP eligibility. We always rotationally grazed our pastures, every five years we no tilled alfalfa into the old pasture and cut it for hay a couple years, then grazed it. Those fields were accepted into the CRP program.

Probably 2/3 of our pasture was accepted.
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That surprises me, the things one can learn here. Awesome.
***I just read about EQIP, it is designed for environmental benefits, not necessarily wildlife or production reduction. So I could see it not having some of the requirements other programs might have. Nice work sourcing that out McFarmer.
**I see the comment about alfalfa being treated the same as row crops, that is interesting. Not much hay ground around me to count.
 
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