What's Up at the USDA Office?
Upcoming Deadlines/Dates
May 15 - August 1: Primary Nesting Season
CRP Reminders
The primary nesting season runs from May 15 – August 1. Please contact the FSA office if you need to perform spot maintenance activities on your CRP acres during this time. Cosmetic mowing of your CRP acres is always prohibited, but you can spot treat areas that are threatened by undesirable vegetation throughout the year. A written request must be made before the County Committee grants approval to conduct maintenance during the nesting season. As a reminder, volunteer trees and woody vegetation must be controlled and removed from CRP acres. Failure to control undesirable vegetation on CRP can result in financial penalties.
County Committee (COC) Election
It’s that time of year when FSA begins the process of the county committee election. This year the election will be for LAA-2, which includes Ludlow, Jefferson, post, Franklin, Linton, and Fairview townships. Essentially the southern portion of the county. The nomination period begins later in June runs through August 1. You can nominate yourself or someone else by completing the appropriate form at our office or download it online. Once nominations are finalized, producers who reside in LAA-2 will cast ballots which will be mailed to you in November. These ballots are due back to the FSA office by early December. The elected member will take office on January 1. We’ll be getting more information out, posting flyers around town, and folks in these townships will be getting a postcard in June.
USDA Accepts More Than 1 Million Acres in Offers Through Conservation Reserve Program General Sign-up
USDA is accepting more than 1 million acres in this year’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) General signup. This is one of several signups that USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) is holding for the program. The results for CRP General signup reflect the continued importance of CRP as a tool to help producers invest in the long-term health, sustainability, and profitability of their land and resources.
Offers for new land in this General CRP signup totaled about 295,000 acres nationwide. Producers submitted re-enrollment offers for 891,000 expiring acres, reflecting the successes of participating in CRP longer term. The total number of CRP acres will continue to climb in the coming weeks once FSA accepts acres from the Grassland CRP signup, which closed May 26. Additionally, so far this year, FSA has received 761,000 offered acres for the Continuous CRP signup, for which FSA accepts applications year-round.
The number of accepted acres that are enrolled in General CRP will be confirmed later this year. Participating producers and landowners should also remember that submitting and accepting a CRP offer is the first step, and producers still need to develop a conservation plan before contracts become effective on October 1, 2023. Each year, during the window between offer acceptance and land enrollment, some producers ultimately decide not to enroll some accepted acres, without penalty.
The General CRP Signup 60 ran from February 27 through April 7, 2023. Through CRP, producers and landowners establish long-term, resource-conserving plant species, such as approved grasses or trees, to control soil erosion, improve soil health and water quality, and enhance wildlife habitat on agricultural land. In addition to the other well-documented benefits, lands enrolled in CRP are playing a key role in climate change mitigation efforts across the country.
In 2021, FSA introduced improvements to the program, which included a new Climate-Smart Practice Incentive to increase carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This incentive provides an annual 3, 5, or 10 percent incentive payment based on the predominant vegetation type for the practices enrolled – from grasses to trees to wetland restoration.
