By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

TROY, Ohio — The last day for the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) general signup 39 is Aug. 27. CRP is a federal program available through the farm bill to farmers to help safeguard environmentally sensitive land.

“It is a program where landowners can voluntarily put land into conservation,” said Erik Lewis, a Pheasants Forever farm bill biologist. “There are different practices landowners can apply to their land. There are different types of payments involved.”

The main things in focus for this signup are grassland practices, especially native grasses and hardwood trees, Lewis said. “There is also a big focus on the pollinators, getting more plants out there that pollinators can use so we can increase their numbers,” he said.

The pollinator plantings are forbs such as purple coneflower, black-eyed Susans, partridge pea, sunflowers; they vary from state to state, Lewis said. The goal is to have a succession of blooms throughout the spring, summer and fall.

The CRP is administered through the USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA). For the current general signup there is a 50 percent cost share to get these practices established. There are also rental payments available to landowners based on the county soil rental rate – they are different for every county. The rates are made to be competitive with normal agricultural rental rates.

The response to the general signup in Ohio has been nothing out of the ordinary, Lewis said. The state’s farming industry is doing well enough that people are not interested in putting their whole farm into the program, which is not the case in other states. “Other Midwestern states are putting in 1,000-acre farms. In Ohio we’re happy to get a 50-acre field,” Lewis said. “We also have other programs in Ohio that compete with CRP.”

Pheasants Forever has been involved with the CRP program for many years and has helped to develop some of the practices, Lewis said. “We need the habitat out there for wildlife. There are a lot of things tied to all of that habitat – there is a huge hunting industry out there, declining bird populations beyond just quail and pheasants, such as grassland songbirds. It is just a type of habitat that we were losing quickly in North America.”

Lewis works in Hamilton, Butler, Warren, Greene, Montgomery, Preble and Miami counties. Pheasants Forever has seven full-time farm bill biologists in Ohio. They work in partnership with the USDA, Ohio Division of Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and its area chapters.

Nationwide, the organization has 700 chapters. For more information, visit www.pheasantsforever.org

To sign up for CRP visit the county FSA office that has your farm’s records. Find the nearest location at www.fsa.usda.gov