DENVER – Time is quickly running out for some Colorado farmers who want to continue receiving federal assistance to improve soil, water, air and habitat quality on their land.
Since the Conservation Stewardship Program was launched five years ago, more than 60 million farm acres nationwide have been enrolled in the program through the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Sophia Kruszewski, a policy specialist for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, said the CSP isn’t about helping farmers avoid environmental harm but rather about enhancing and improving what conservation-minded farmers already are doing.
“So maybe they started doing a little cover cropping, but they really want to get more into a full suite of resource-conserving crop rotations,” she said. “Maybe they’ve done some improvements in the way that they’re managing their livestock, but they want to start looking at rotational grazing.”
The CSP, which was created in the 2008 Farm Bill, has been reauthorized and strengthened with the latest version. The nearly 20,000 farmers with five-year contracts up for renewal must do so by Friday through the nearest NRCS office.
Kruszewski called the program a win-win for the environment and for farmers and said the CSP represents a new, forward-thinking version of American agriculture. Kruszewski said new farmers interested in the program can submit an application to enroll at any time, with NRCS collecting and ranking the applications once per year, typically in February.
For more information about CSP, visit www.nrcs.usda.gov.
