Should State and Federal Org’s Fund Private Landowners?

Brittman wrote:

CRP and CREP are USDA (AGRICULTURE) supported conservation projects. The idea is to remove crop land from production – vs simple price supports to farmers, remove land more susceptible to wind and water erosion from farming, and provide grassland habitat (conservation). Has nothing to do with hunting access … but that said …

State Walk in Programs in the many states piggy back off that program and lease this land to open it to hunters …

CRP subsidies are a very small percentage of the subsidies handed out to farmers (price supports, crop insurance – supported below true cost, etc…)

You can see online by USA, by state, by county, by farmer every subsidy handed out by the USDA over the past 20 years or more. Breaks out by type of subsidy also.

The database tracks $522.7 billion in farm subsidies from commodity, crop insurance, disaster programs and conservation payments paid between 1995 and 2023

I thought CREP programs are specific to a watershed. I’ve seen the signs in MN, can’t remember the watershed, but you can’t hunt without owner permission. The one probably most familiar with people here would be CREP in SD, which the ones I’ve seen are all centered around the james river watershed. These you can hunt. Is this really a piggyback of WIA? I just figured it was watershed/program dependent? So all CREP for a certain watershed will either allow public hunting or not. Is this decided and paid for by the state or USDA? Perhaps I’m thinking too much here….

I don’t own enough land to be involved in anything like this but the notion that only a landowner would benefit from being a good environmental steward is insane to me. Nobody lives in a bubble.

dirtywater wrote:

I don’t own enough land to be involved in anything like this but the notion that only a landowner would benefit from being a good environmental steward is insane to me. Nobody lives in a bubble.

When the price goes down, you plant more. When it goes up…you plant more.

No joke I have farming relatives who say this often.

Brittman wrote:

CRP payments were competitive a few decades ago, but at this time a landowner usually can get a better return farming or leasing than CRP payments offer.

CRP can offer landowners a fixed income when weather takes out their crops (flooding, drought, hail). Also provides a buffer when grain prices drop below the price it cost to plant, nurture, and harvest.

CRP grass can provide an emergency hay buffer in drought years. Pheasant hunters know this all too well when you drive up to a WIA and it is hayed.

As someone who leases out most of our land, it’s not even close. The last time I checked on the parcel by the house it was about 3x more income to lease the land out then to put it in the available CRP program. There will come a day when we pivot and just want the taxes covered (which CRP will do), but for now the extra passive income is appreciated. We take a majority of our leased income and have it invested via a Roth and 529 for our 2 (soon to be 3) kids. Once they are young adults we will probably phase the land nearest our house out of production and into something else less lucrative and more natural. For now the ag income is too profitable to pass up.

We hear about some outlier stories above for specific parcels in specific programs being paid out top dollar, but the majority general programs availble are far from something that makes a person wealthy. It’s not as if every landowner is rolling in money creating some giant wildlife preserve using your tax dollars.

Like any guberment program, there will be abusers.

I see it both ways. These programs certainly have *some* benefit for our lands and water, and thereby benefit the outdoors on the whole here. How much it benefits the public is very debatable, and generally deals in abstracts ie Farmer Joe put that 20 acres by the creek in CRP which benefits everyones water, but there is no objective metric tied to how much that benefits anything. Additionally with any govt organization there is a lot of overhead required to administer these programs, some of which the money funnels through 3 govt orgs before going to anyone actually doing anything.

The bigger issue for me is twofold, one is just how far in debt we are as a country, so any unnecessary spending needs to go imho. The other portion of this, is that these funds are largely subsidies for the wealthiest among us. If you have the money for land that does not need to be maximized financially (Farm/hunt lease, logging etc.) this basically subsidizes their taxes. And those benefitting the most are not Joe Blow hunting landowner with small acreages. What brought this to my attention is a celebrity hunter that inherited his families 450 acre farm (worth about $5M) and has it enrolled in all the programs available, and has turned this into their full-time career in Land Mgmt, basically teaching other rich people how to maximize these programs. Just rubbed me the wrong way. And FWIW I’m pro-rich people, and want to own my own hunting land someday…on my own dime.

I just love that I have to pay for the trees from the DNR nursery to plant on my land – but then the DNR / Ag Dept. gives grants to farmers in my area to tear trees out to plant more crops. Makes a lot of sense

There are somewhere between $1.7 & $1.8 billion spent on CRP land in the United States with about 23 million acres enrolled. That comes out to less than $80 per acre. Ag leases are variable, but anwhere from $200-300 per acre is common on productive ground and lesser in areas to the North. It’s not some giant payout to take land out of production. A lot of it is HEL land which is benefitial to many to NOT plant. Again, there’s a reason we have made progress with regards to nitrates, sedimentation, water pollution, etc. If you enjoy trout fishing, grouse hunting, pheasant hunting, fishing many rivers or even lakes with agricultural land nearby…then these dollars aren’t all wasted.

Another point of evidence that CRP isn’t some lucrative payout is that only about 2% of tillable privately owned land is in a CRP program in the United States.

For the mathematicians in the group looking to save substantial money and cut into our budget deficit…

The money spent on CRP programs is approximately 0.00025% of our annual budget.

For someone who makes $100,000 in salary – that’d be like reducing their income to $99,975 to solve a budget crisis.

I am a fiscal conservative and have voted accordingly for most of my life, but cutting programs that are relatively cheap (big picture looking at federal dollars) and help with clean water, wildlife, etc. will not make any discernible difference.

Brittman wrote:

CRP payments were competitive a few decades ago, but at this time a landowner usually can get a better return farming or leasing than CRP payments offer.

CRP can offer landowners a fixed income when weather takes out their crops (flooding, drought, hail). Also provides a buffer when grain prices drop below the price it cost to plant, nurture, and harvest.

CRP grass can provide an emergency hay buffer in drought years. Pheasant hunters know this all too well when you drive up to a WIA and it is hayed.

Emergency buffer for hay – my favorite is when they enroll in the emergency program then sell the bales for profit . Double dipping .

Right now the CRP payment is not great – but around 10 years ago it was 3-400 dollars an acre while crop rent was 250-300 in the area I grew up in – for select parcels .

When corn was 7 bucks in 2007- 2010ish ? I thought I’d never see CRP make a comeback but it did in Western IA.

isu22andy wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Brittman wrote:</div>
CRP payments were competitive a few decades ago, but at this time a landowner usually can get a better return farming or leasing than CRP payments offer.

CRP can offer landowners a fixed income when weather takes out their crops (flooding, drought, hail). Also provides a buffer when grain prices drop below the price it cost to plant, nurture, and harvest.

CRP grass can provide an emergency hay buffer in drought years. Pheasant hunters know this all too well when you drive up to a WIA and it is hayed.

Emergency buffer for hay – my favorite is when they enroll in the emergency program then sell the bales for profit . Double dipping .

Right now the CRP payment is not great – but around 10 years ago it was 3-400 dollars an acre while crop rent was 250-300 in the area I grew up in – for select parcels .

When corn was 7 bucks in 2007- 2010ish ? I thought I’d never see CRP make a comeback but it did in Western IA.

I support a lot of CRP type programming, but this is definitely wrong. I wish the buffer strips meant the funds had to first go into planting something native along the area to stop erosion and that was lasting. Once that is established, then farmers could pocket the sum paid to keep it out of production

With any government conservation program, I have long noticed that a small number of people are really bothered by the fact that the landowner can somehow derive some ancillary benefit from the program beyond just the cash payment. It’s like this is some “undeserved” bonus that the landowner is cheating the public out of.

From the landowner side, all of this is factored into their decision to enroll in the first place. For example, I know the idea that CRP-enrolled ground is not open to public hunting drives some hunters crazy. Well, the other side of that is that if enrolling land in CRP meant that the land had to be open to public access, I can guarantee you that CRP ground would all but disappear in many areas. No landowner that I know of would sign up a single acre if doing so would open their land to public access. So ALL the benefits of CRP would be lost.

Everybody thinks that when it comes to ANY government spending, they are personally always getting the short end of the stick. They are always the guy who pays in more than they “get back”. Yeah, no. Almost nobody single-handedly pays their own way when it comes to taxes paid versus things they receive from the government.

I agree grouse. There are a few landowners who don’t mind opening up their land to public hunting, and it seems more common as you head west both in the state and country. These people I believe “double dip” but in a good way in my opinion. They can get a crp or similar payment and also get a payment for the MN walk in access program. These can be done good hunting and I hope the program expands. In Iowa their walk-in is called IHAP, iowa hunter access program. There they receive no payment, but the DNR agrees to work on the land in order to keep it in requirements for crp payments, including seeding/native grass planting etc.

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TheFamousGrouse wrote:

With any government conservation program, I have long noticed that a small number of people are really bothered by the fact that the landowner can somehow derive some ancillary benefit from the program beyond just the cash payment. It’s like this is some “undeserved” bonus that the landowner is cheating the public out of.

From the landowner side, all of this is factored into their decision to enroll in the first place. For example, I know the idea that CRP-enrolled ground is not open to public hunting drives some hunters crazy. Well, the other side of that is that if enrolling land in CRP meant that the land had to be open to public access, I can guarantee you that CRP ground would all but disappear in many areas. No landowner that I know of would sign up a single acre if doing so would open their land to public access. So ALL the benefits of CRP would be lost.

Everybody thinks that when it comes to ANY government spending, they are personally always getting the short end of the stick. They are always the guy who pays in more than they “get back”. Yeah, no. Almost nobody single-handedly pays their own way when it comes to taxes paid versus things they receive from the government.

Well said.

There’s land for sale. Those who want to buy it can line up to get filthy rich off all the CRP profits if they want.

…or perhaps they b***h as a mechanism of their anger because they cannot afford the land

In MN, how does having land in a CRP program affect property taxes? Or does it? Reason I ask is this. As hunters, I’m guessing most of us would like to see more access to hunting land. If a landowner enrolls in CRP and a walk-in program, I assume they still pay a certain amount of property tax. Now, if rather than enrolling more of those types of acres, the government buys more land for public access that land is forever off the tax roles. I believe counties get kickbacks for some of that lost revenue, but that’s still taxpayer funded. Seems to me it may make more sense to invest in more walk-in access to private land enrolled in CRP. I believe this is an approach South Dakota has put more focus on.

buckybadger wrote:

Those who want to buy it can line up to get filthy rich off all the CRP profits if they want.

The local SWCD forester gave me info to enroll in SFIA which pays 11.02 to 19.50 per acre

I knew it Reef. You seemed like the type to be stealing all my tax dollars and getting rich while building your hunting paradise!

buckybadger wrote:

There are somewhere between $1.7 & $1.8 billion spent on CRP land in the United States with about 23 million acres enrolled.

Now add in ALL the other programs and get back to me.

buckybadger wrote:

For someone who makes $100,000 in salary – that’d be like reducing their income to $99,975 to solve a budget crisis.

I see this logic a lot lately and can’t say I really understand nor agree with it. So if I’m making $100k and forced to give $25 to someone making far more than that, I should just shut up and keep doing it? Or using your analogy, keep those Netflix/Paramount subscriptions even if you don’t use them, because they are such a small part of your budget.

buckybadger wrote:

There’s land for sale. Those who want to buy it can line up to get filthy rich off all the CRP profits if they want.

…or perhaps they b***h as a mechanism of their anger because they cannot afford the land

I think you are missing the point, no one is saying they are getting rich off it. Helping them stay rich, maybe. You said yourself you can’t afford to not lease your ag land out, so someone down the road who CAN afford to not lease their land to a farmer or hunter, should be partially subsidized by you? And for something they likely would be doing anyway (keep the land natural or develop it for habitat)? Doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m open to counter arguments.

And this thread is 100% related to just having paid a fortune in taxes, which if I were able to keep what I paid, I would have my own hunting land!

“There’s land for sale. Those who want to buy it can line up to get filthy rich off all the CRP profits if they want.”

Not only that if you look at tax forfeit land and small land plots for sale alot of them are already or have been enrolled in CRP programs already. If it was profitable the previous owners would not be so inclined to let it go. I think some need to actually take advantage of the WIA in their area and note the difference in wildlife. We didn’t have much for prairie chickens around here and now we have grouse and prairie chickens. Not only that its on WIA land so the whiny people from the ATV thread can walk the prairie all day long here. Land is pricey. Driving a million dollar combine around a thread of buffer strip that could easily be tiled over is a PITA. CRP and other land programs are not a money making scheme for most farmers around here, and I thank them for participating, even though I don’t even use them. One day a Prairie Chicken is gonna pop its little head out of the grass while I’m fishing and that will be well worth my pittance contribution.

Some people just pick fights… twist words, when someone asks a legitimate question. They turn it into their own bragging post and looking down their noses. Pretty cool that always happens with the same players.

I think WIA is one of the best things going for the public land hunters.
I have had a lot of good hunts on WIA in ND (Plots), SD, NE and KS. Here in MN I haven’t hunted much of it. 1 piece is the only thing that comes to mind.
For states like IA, NE and KS without WIA there would be a lot less public land to access. These states are ranked in the last 5 for amount of public land available.

Bucky, I have the same question as Joel.

Do you know if there’s any tax breaks if land is enrolled in CRP??

I have 7 acres of low production hay field that only costs me money and doesn’t do much if anything at all for wildlife.

Since it’s less than 10 acres I don’t qualify for any ag breaks.

Reef W wrote:

I’d rather they get subsidized to support wildlife and other environmental concerns than get subsidized to grow more corn.

Amen. Farming is so subsidized its crazy. I know a few farmers and they will do anything they can to avoid ever paying the government a dollar but they have no problem taking every possible subsidy handout from the government. Its ironic because they’re so against other people getting handouts but not themselves.

My mind on it is we’re going to have to incentivize conservation or very few are going to do it and as technology advances more and more land is being torn up/drained, etc. The benefits usually spill over to other lands (deer move off private, ducks hatch and fly everywhere, water flows, etc).

I’m for it. Give big ag the chance they would till up, tile and make black every acre in the county I live in. Literally all of it.

Yes, you can’t hunt it without permission. But at least it is there. There are guys around here that will spend a pile of money to grub out a treeline all to get one more row of corn in. It’s insane.

PS small time farmers aren’t making a dime and haven’t for a long time. Also, if you were to open up all of this CRP ground to public hunting, all wildlife would be exterminated, run off and the places trashed by folks that could care less about conservation.

I would prefer landowners keep the ground private to themselves so that the wildlife and habitat is respected, whether I get a chance to hunt there or not.

Pig-hunter wrote:

Also, if you were to open up all of this CRP ground to public hunting, all wildlife would be exterminated, run off and the places trashed by folks that could care less about conservation.

With that logic every public land hunter should hang it up. Everything has either been exterminated or run off.
To say a non landowner hunter doesn’t care about conservation is laughable.
Purchasing a hunting license or a tag is contributing to conservation. Purchasing guns, ammo, archery equipment etc is as well. Ever hear of the Pittman Robinson act? Not to mention joining any of the many wildlife organizations helps conservation. Last time I checked you don’t need to be a landowner to join.

I guess I am just the non-land owning peasant born at the wrong time.

In ND, they are looking to pass a bill that would allocate less gratis tags to landowners, still giving landowners a 50%+ chance to draw. You’d swear the sky is falling.

There’s a housing developer in the north metro who buys up large parcels of land I used to hunt. His $120K truck has BHA, OnX, and Public Land Owner stickers. And then he goes and hunts high fence in Illinois and ND. Hard work making money at the expense of habitat.

Looking at CREP from a SD vs. MN basis. Both appear to be a coordinated effort between the state and the USDA and is generally a step up in habitat formation/protection from regular CRP.

SD requires CREP participants in the James River Valley to open that land to public hunting. MN does not.

Game birds (pheasants, ducks, turkeys, grouse) live on public land year around. I suppose some are harvested as the season goes on and the rest often get educated … but they are there or nearby.

CRP open to public hunting would not be decimated …