National Association of Wheat Growers Applauds FSA's Announcement to Extend CRP Contracts

The USDA's Farm Service Agency (FSA) announced that it will hold a continuous signup period for the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) beginning June 3, 2019 and offer extensions for expiring CRP contracts. NAWG commends the Agency for recognizing the need to provide producers an option to extend contracts by allowing for one-year extensions to existing CRP participants who have expiring CRP contracts of 14 years or less. 

 

"CRP is an important conservation program option for many of our members and we appreciate that FSA is proactively taking steps to allow for contract extensions. This action is especially important if FSA will not hold a general sign-up before contracts expire this year," stated NAWG President and Lavon, TX farmer Ben Scholz. "We encourage USDA to move quickly implement the 2018 Farm Bill and to allow enrollment options for producers in all the conservation programs." 

 

Alternatively, producers with expiring contracts may have the option to enroll in the Transition Incentives Program which provides two additional annual rental payments on the condition the land is sold or rented to a beginning farmer or rancher or a member of a socially disadvantaged group. 

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Six hundred Canadian farms grow grain for Warburton's under custom contract — and that partnership exists because of Canadian plant breeding. Now the man responsible for maintaining it is sounding the alarm.

Adam Dyck is the program manager for Warburton's Canada, a company that produces over two million loaves of bread a day for more than 20,000 retail locations across the UK. He's watched Canadian wheat deliver thirty years of yield gains and quality advancements that make it worth sourcing at scale — and shipping across the Atlantic. But he's also watching the investment conditions that produced those gains come under pressure. Dyck makes the case for a new funding mechanism that brings both public and private dollars into wheat breeding before Canada's competitive window starts to close.