Some 69 million acres were enrolled in the Conservation Stewardship Program in fiscal 2023, or about 8% of all U.S. agricultural land, according to a report by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
That's an increase from the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years when 60 million and 61 million acres were enrolled, respectively. But it's a drop from 2019, when 76 million acres were in the program. Meanwhile, funding for new contracts increased from $700 million in fiscal 2019 to $1 billion in fiscal 2023.
"CSP's shrinking national footprint clearly shows that even the combined stair-step of 2018 farm bill funding and infusion of IRA dollars was not enough investment to reverse multiple farm bills worth of underfunding," the report says.
"This has been and continues to be a major loss for conservation agriculture, as acreage under CSP contracts is one of the clearest metrics available nationally of practice permanence on the landscape supported through federal investment."
CSP, first created in the 2002 farm bill and then overhauled and renamed in 2008, helps producers who have already implemented some conservation practices continue those practices while also adopting more.
The 2018 farm bill set a dollar cap on the program regardless of acreage enrolled. Previous farm bills set a target number of acres and required administrations to manage the program to achieve a per-acre payment rate of $18. The switch to a funding limit "cut overall funding available to CSP over the course of the 2018 farm bill and reduced CSP’s baseline funding (and thus total conservation title baseline) for subsequent farm bills," the report said.
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Farmers enrolled more than 49 million new acres in the program from FY19 to FY23. New Mexico had the most new acreage with 6.1 million enrolled between the two fiscal years. Utah and Arizona added 3.6 million and 2.7 million newly enrolled acres, respectively.
Additionally, 9,848 farmers already using the program renewed contracts from FY20 to FY23, a 21% renewal rate under the current farm bill cycle. There were no renewals in FY19 when the Natural Resources Conservation Service adopted a new ranking system.
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