"Agriculture Secretary Vilsack Announces New Conservation Reserve Program Initiative to Restore Grasslands, Wetlands and Wildlife
Increase Acreage for SAFE – 400,000 additional acres
CRP prevents the erosion of 325 million tons of soil each year, or enough soil to fill 19.5 million dump trucks; CRP has restored more than two million acres of wetlands and two million acres of riparian buffers; Each year, CRP keeps more than 600 million pounds of nitrogen and more than 100 million pounds of phosphorous from flowing into our nation's streams, rivers, and lakes; CRP provides $1.8 billion annually to landowners-dollars that make their way into local economies, supporting small businesses and creating jobs; and CRP is the largest private lands carbon sequestration program in the country. By placing vulnerable cropland into conservation, CRP sequesters carbon in plants and soil, and reduces both fuel and fertilizer usage. In 2010, CRP resulted in carbon sequestration equal to taking almost 10 million cars off the road.