Contract holders are receiving $1.68 billion in rental payments under the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) for the 21.9 million acres enrolled in the program.
USDA said the enrollment total at the end of September was 21.9 million acres, with contracts on 5.35 million acres expiring as of September 30. With contracts on 3.4 million acres set to start October 1, that would put CRP enrollments at around 19.95 million acres.
There were also another 425,777 acres that were enrolled under continuous signup 53 that ended August 21. USDA data indicates that most of those contracts have a start date in Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 as the latest update indicated that just over 30,000 acres had a contract start in FY 2020.
That would put total CRP acres as FY 2021 starts at around 20.35 million acres.
Under the 2018 Farm Bill, the cap on CRP acres rose to 25 million for 2021, up from 24.5 million in 2020. Contracts on another 3 million acres are scheduled to expire as of September 30, 2021 with another 4 million acres to expire as of September 30, 2022.
This would suggest another general CRP signup could be in the offing for FY 2021.