Slippage Effects of the Conservation Reserve Program: New Evidence from Satellite Imagery

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is the largest land retirement program ever operated in the US. Since its inception in 1985, many researchers have studied the impacts of this program; however, only a few have analyzed how the CRP affects surrounding non–enrolled parcels. In this research I examine how the CRP may affect the conversion of non–cropped land to agriculture, a phenomenon referred to as “slippage” in the literature, and specifically addressed by Wu (2000) and Roberts and Bucholtz (2005). Building on these earlier studies, I empirically model slippage using data derived from satellite imagery that provides information on land cover changes between 1992 and 2001. The study area consists of 1,053 counties located in the Northern Plains, Corn Belt and Lake States regions. Results support the existence of slippage effects from the CRP, but they are more conservative than the ones found by Wu (2000). The evidence of slippage provided here is important information for planners, given that whether and how the CRP affects land use decisions in surrounding areas is key information for implementing conservation efforts more efficiently.