A new study finds nearly 70 percent of farmers who applied for two of USDA’s most popular conservation programs over the past decade were rejected.
Michael Happ with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy says the report examined farmer application rate of approvals for the Environmental Quality Incentives and Conservation Stewardship programs.
“So spinning it a different way, only about 31 percent of farmers who applied to EQUIP and only about 42 percent of farmers who applied to CSP were awarded contracts.”
He tells Brownfield those percentages are even lower in some major agricultural states like Minnesota, where only 14 percent of farmers were awarded CSP contracts.
