CRP Enrollments Halted With Farm Bill Expiration

Expiration of the 2014 Farm Bill means that USDA will not enroll any new acres into the program and the program now has far less than 24 million acres in it.Until a new farm bill is passed or the current law is extended or some other action is taken, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) will not approve any new CRP contracts or process offers for enrollment for all CRP signup types, and they will not authorize any CRP contract revisions or corrections.Payments under the CRP program will be issued starting today, but that will be about the extent of what can happen.As of the close of July (latest available data), there were 22.63 million acres in CRP, including 1.35 million acres enrolled via the continuous signup 50 that was held during Fiscal Year (FY) 2017. USDA said that another 20,269 acres have been enrolled via the continuous signup 51 for FY 2018 during a signup that ran from June 4 to August 17. It is not clear how many more acres have been enrolled via that signup other than the 20,269 acres USDA has confirmed were enrolled.The other thing that will happen for the CRP is that contracts covering 1.42 million acres will expire as of September 30. If no other new acres entered the program under the continuous signup 51, that would pare CRP acres to 21.21 million acres. But that figure also could be impacted by the number of CRP contract holders that opted to take a one-year extension offered to those with expiring contracts of 14 years or less.It would appear the 21.21 million acres would be a minimum level of ground that is now in the CRP.