Land Use of Rejected, Enrolled, and Expiring Fields in the Conservation Reserve Program

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)—the agency’s largest land retirement program—pays landowners a yearly rental fee to plant and maintain environmentally beneficial land covers on eligible portions of their land instead of crops. In this report, the authors examine land-use outcomes of parcels that were both offered and rejected from General Signup 49, the auction component of CRP that was administered in 2016. Because Signup 49 featured an unusually high rejection rate (81.6 percent), many offers rejected from the auction in this CRP Signup would likely have been accepted in more typical Signups. Examining land-use choices of these rejected offers helps identify what land uses would have been replaced by CRP land covers if the Signup had featured a higher acceptance rate. The study finds that rejected CRP land goes into a variety of land covers, including cropland, grassland, and Continuous Signup CRP (allowing environmentally sensitive land to be enrolled at any time). The study also finds that new program applicants who are rejected are more likely to be in cropland after the Signup, if not in the CRP, compared to returning participants. Finally, the study finds large geographic differences in land-use decisions of rejected CRP applicants and discusses how the current design of the CRP influences its impacts.