Law Commons^™

Conservation Reserve Program: What Happens To The Land After The Contracts End?, Raymond J. Watson Jr.

Northern Illinois University Law Review

This article addresses the fact that under the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), farmers have idled millions of environmentally sensitive acres of farmland for ten and sometimes fifteen years by entering into contracts with the USDA. In the 1985 farm bill, while creating the CRP, Congress also began strict regulation of highly erodible land and wetlands. The author attempts to answer whether the land under the CRP contracts will be subject to different regulations upon termination or expiration of the contracts than if the farmers had continued to farm the land.