Missouri river bottom south of Sioux City, IA | The only one paying that much around here is Uncle Sam for CRP ground. They got about 40,000 acres since 2014. Most of it went in as wetland CRP. Now with the Clean Water Act and the outcome of the John Duarte case there is an uneasy feeling that the Army Corps of Engineers may not let those acres come out of wetland CRP. The kicker here is some of those fields were very productive with just enough hydric soils that it qualified to be enrolled into wetland CRP. The only reason the landlords enrolled them into CRP is because they could get more rent from the government then what the farmers were willing to pay. If corn and soybeans prices do improve then the landlord may have been better off to take a little less cash rent now with the ability to raise them in the future. Is it a case where the government dangled the big carrot up front to get ground into CRP with the intent of keeping it there? This year the maximum payment rate was reduce to $300 per acre and I suspect it will keep dropping because of budget concerns.
Tom N. |
High cash rent
