The Economic Impact of CRP Acres in South Dakota Returning to Crop Production

In 2007 South Dakota had 729,397 acres of CRP contracts expire, which was nearly 47% of the 1.56 million acres enrolled in the program. During this period, there was no new farm bill or new CRP policy provisions. Just as enrolling these acres into the program had significant negative impacts on revenue generation in the farm and rural economy in South Dakota, putting these acres back into production will also have significant positive impacts on the economy of the state. The objective of this study is to estimate the economic impacts that could occur as some of these CRP acres are converted back to production for three different regions within the state. The effect of converting some of the CRP land to grazing is not examined in this analysis. Only the effects of converting CRP land to crop production is analyzed here.