Complementary or Competitive? Emerging Interactions between Perennial Cover Restoration and Protection in the Conservation Reserve Program

The USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) delivers environmental benefits to society by enrolling cropland and grasslands to reestablish or safeguard long-term vegetative cover. In recent years, the CRP has dramatically increased in enrollment in its new Grassland signup subprogram, which conserves existing grasslands and now constitutes a plurality of CRP acres. In contrast, enrollment in the General signup subprogram, which restores marginal croplands to grassland, has been in steady decline. Through at least the end of the 2018 Farm Bill, these two subprograms share a combined acreage cap which in theory could create either competitive or complementary interactions within the program. This paper uses descriptive analysis and a spatial comparison of participant incentives to assess the relationship between these two CRP signup types. We find that the recent low supply of General offers has been accompanied by relatively low EBI cutoffs, thereby maintaining a consistent enrollment of eligible offers, with a large share of the remaining cap being filled with Grassland acres. Despite this trend, incentives for expiring CRP land—an instance where participants could choose to either enroll in the Grassland program or re-enroll in General—favor re-enrolling in the General signup in 62% of county-years, and even more so when the grazing deduction is utilized. We argue that while these two programs do not compete administratively under current trends, these enrollment patterns could tighten competition between the programs in future periods if total enrollment approaches a shared cap, especially considering that programmatic incentives or market conditions could change under future Farm Bills. We discuss the implication of these findings for program design going forward.