7/14/2010 8:38:00 AM
By: WJBC Staff
Contracts for the first signup of the 2010 Conservation Stewardship Program, or CSP, have been announced. According to Bill Gradle, Illinois State Conservationist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Illinois has obligated 265 contracts statewide. These contracts cover 175,941 acres of cropland, pastureland and nonindustrial private forestland and will offer a total of $4,018,047 in funding for conservation activities on this Illinois land.
Nationally, 10,630 contracts on 12,688,937 acres will be obligated for $144,968,683 in funding. These reward payments and financial assistance will put new conservation solutions and practices on the land. The 2010 signup was just 80,063 acres short of the enrollment goal of 12,769,000. A breakdown of Illinois enrollment acres shows that more than 97 percent enrolled was on cropland, with pastureland and nonindustrial private forestland, NIPF, acres making up the difference.
CSP encourages land stewards to improve their conservation performance by installing and adopting additional resource-conserving activities, and improving, maintaining, and managing existing activities on agricultural land and nonindustrial private forest land. With CSP, the entire operation must be enrolled in the contract and all eligible land must be operated separately and be under the applicant's control for the term of the proposed contract.
Whether producers have used NRCS programs or our technical assistance or if they just did it on their own over the years, the end result is the same, Gradle explains. Depending on your ground, the natural resource problems you face and those youve fixed, CSP could be the perfect solution to reward you for all the conservation measures youve takenand itll help you keep going and do even more.
CSP is a continuous signup program, so interested farmers can apply at any time. For a closer look at all the program details and the type of information and documentation needed, visit with your local NRCS staff or view details online at
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