U.S. Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) - Acreage by County

This dataset represents the cumulative acreage of farmland by county enrolled in the Farm Service Agency's Conservation Reserve Program in 2004. To create this dataset, the Conservation Biology Institute (CBI) obtained the cumulative acreage by county summary table from the Farm Service Agency (FSA) for 2004 (the latest year available in such form). CBI then joined this to a dataset containing county boundaries for the U.S. to create this dataset. As described on the Farm Service Agency website (http://www.fsa.usda.gov), the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is a voluntary program for agricultural landowners. The CRP provides a mechanism to receive annual rental payments and cost-share assistance to establish long-term, resource conserving cover types on eligible farmland. This program encourages vegetative cover types which reduce runoff and sedimentation, and helps improve the quality of both ground and surface water. Areas enrolled in the CRP also contribute positively to wildlife habitat. To be eligible for enrollment in the CRP, land must be cropland and be planted to an agricultural crop for several of the preceding years, and be physically and legally capable of being managed for production of agricultural commodities. Areas must also fall within higher priority conservation areas as determined by the FSA. The acreages contained in the attributes of this dataset represent total acreages for the county, not acreages for individual polygons of the county. Thus the acreage attribute cannot be used for summary statistics (e.g., total acreage by state) because of this redundancy. For summary statistics, it is best to download the original table from the Farm Service Agency (http://www.fsa.usda.gov/FSA), or refer to summary publications produced by the FSA.