West Central Illinois | olivetroad - 6/23/2025 11:25
My best bang for the buck, which is the lowest cost per acre, with fencing a new farm is to do all the perimeter. Hard to only do the perimeter with multiple different ending dates crp contracts.
I would love to do a crp program that allows grazing every year.
If the overall intention is to eventually graze the whole farm once all the contracts are up might as well build the perimeter fence and section off the areas there's existing contracts with a single hotwire, etc. That's my plan this summer once i get 1st cutting hay behind me i'm working on getting the home farm perimeter fenced completely. Much nicer to graze stalks, waterways, field edges in fall and winter when you can just run 1 single polywire to subdivide fields to keep them where they need to be and at least you know if a couple are on wrong side of hotwire some morning they're still on the farm not on their way to the next township...
The CRP on the homeplace I have 5 years of eligibility left to graze it under the young farmer exemption but it follows the same rules as if it were released for drought with the dates, grazing intensity, etc. I talked to somebody in the know with FSA/NRCS a while back and was told there's talk about modifying CRP to include managed grazing that wouldn't have to be a young farmer exemption or payment reduction like it is currently. Never made sense to me for the government to pay what they pay to keep this highly erodible ground seeded down but not be used for anything but maybe some emergency hay in a drought some years. If the objective is to keep that ground out of crop production there's a lot of other ways to go about it where they can still have their control over how it's done like they do but still could save the govt. some money but give grazers and landowners more opportunities to use the land. |
CRP ground to Pasture
