Land and Natural Resources
U.S. agricultural production relies heavily on the Nation’s land, water, and other natural resources, and has a direct impact on the quality of the Nation’s natural environment. Over the years, improvement in the sector’s productive use of resources has reduced the amount of land and water needed per unit of output, and concerted public and private efforts have improved the sector’s environmental performance. These charts illustrate several aspects of these trends.
USDA provides financial and technical assistance to agricultural producers through voluntary conservation programs to address natural resource concerns. While the 2002 and 2008 Farm Acts each increased conservation spending, the 2014 and 2018 Farm Acts held total budgeted spending largely level, at an average of between $6.0 and $6.5 billion per year in 2023 dollars. Actual spending (shown in the chart) has varied more year to year. Current major funded USDA programs include the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, which assists partners addressing problems on a regional or watershed scale through methods including land retirement, easements, and conservation practices. The Agricultural Conservation Easement Program provides long-term or permanent easements for preservation of wetlands and the protection of agricultural land from commercial or residential development. The Conservation Stewardship Program provides 5-year contracts that pay producers to maintain or expand existing conservation activities. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program provides financial assistance to farmers to employ conservation practices, such as conservation tillage, and planting cover crops. The Conservation Reserve Program provides 10‒15-year contracts that pay producers to restrict agricultural land use in ways that promote ecosystem services. This chart does not include funding provided under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which provided additional funding for several major conservation programs. Estimated IRA spending totaled approximately $3.1 billion in fiscal year 2024 and enacted IRA funding totaled approximately $5.7 billion in fiscal year 2025.
USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) covered about 22.9 million acres of environmentally sensitive land at the end of fiscal 2023, with an annual budget of roughly $1.8 billion (making it USDA’s largest single conservation program in terms of spending at that time). Enrollees receive annual rental and other incentive payments for taking eligible land out of production for 10 years or more. Program acreage tends to be concentrated on marginally productive cropland that is susceptible to erosion by wind or rainfall. A large share of CRP land was in the Plains (from Texas to Montana), where rainfall is limited and much of the land is subject to potentially severe wind erosion. Smaller concentrations of CRP land were found in eastern Washington and Oregon, southern Iowa, northern Missouri, the Mississippi Delta, and southeastern Idaho and northwestern Utah.