On a soggy December day in Doland, S.D., Dave Mendel was reminded of one side benefit he sees from putting tracts of his farmland in CRP: On days like that one, it saves him the frustration of getting heavy machinery stuck in muddy fields.

CRP, or the Conservation Reserve Program, turned 30 this month. For three decades, producers have been able to take marginal cropland out of production in exchange for payments from the federal government.

The program began with the signing of the 1985 farm bill on Dec. 23 of that year.

“CRP has always been popular in South Dakota,” said Owen Fagerhaug.

Fagerhaug is the conservation program manager for the Farm Service Agency in Huron, S.D. He said about 1 million acres of South Dakota land is enrolled in the program each year.

“CRP started as a soil conservation practice that has evolved into not only that,” he said. “Wildlife habitat and water quality practices have broadened the scope and resource needs for the CRP program.”

It was during the wetter years of the 1990s, when Mendel was farming with his older brother who has since retired, that they decided to put some land into CRP. They were seeing more problems with salinity, or salty soil, around wetland areas.

Now Mendel, 66, farms with two of his nephews. They grow corn and soybeans south of Doland. They also grow wheat, which isn’t popular in the area, but Mendel said it’s valuable in the crop rotation. They plant cover crops and graze cattle from their 400-head cow-calf operation as well.

Today, the family most frequently uses the CRP program known as continuous signup, which was first offered in 1996. Those who sign up agree not to farm the land for 10 to 15 years. They plant a cover of grass instead.

The option differs from the general CRP program in that it sets aside a wetland area and a surrounding buffer strip rather than an entire field. The application process isn’t a competitive one like traditional CRP, so farmers don’t need to worry about acreage quotas and whether there will be room for their land before the cap is met.

Mendel sees several benefits of taking the marginal land out of production. “It was a nuisance to go around these spots,” he said.

Grasses he planted there through a cost-share program are rebuilding the soil structure. More roots and organic matter in the soil means it’s able to absorb more water and reduce runoff and soil erosion.

“With those grasses and fibrous roots, it just acts like a sponge,” he said.

The wildlife habitat that the land provides is another fringe benefit, Mendel said. He’s seen more pheasants on the land, as well as songbirds, skunks, raccoons, deer and coyotes. His family hunts there, as do friends and neighbors, and they’re able to lease some land to other hunters.

The program pays the farmer rent for the upland acres in CRP, based on the land’s soil rating. The payments are not as much as Mendel could make cropping it, he said, but there are other ways in which it pays off.

Crop insurance is based on proven yields, for example. So without those marginal acres included in the equasion, his field is yielding better. “You’re essentially putting the toughest ground out of production,” he said.

Producers enroll their land under contracts that last between 10 and 15 years. The rental rates they get for those parcels vary by county and depending on the soil rating.

County Farm Service Agency offices work with producers to enroll their land, so the first step to joining the program is contacting the county office.

Most producers looking to enroll land in CRP have a specific goal in mind as to what they want to get out of it, Fagerhaug said. They want specific habitat improvements, rental payments or help with seeding native grasses.

The main goal of CRP when the program began was to curb soil erosion. Since that time, more than 9 billion tons of soil has been preserved from eroding – enough to fill 600 million dump trucks, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

It also has helped reduce nitrogen and phosphorus runoff and restored wetlands, which improves water quality.Jerry Schmitz, the newly elected president of the South Dakota Soybean Association board, has enrolled about 20 percent of his Vermillion-area farm in CRP.

It’s something he started about 10 years ago on his wetland acres. In that time, he’s seen the pheasant population grow. “This year was tremendous,” he said.

Schmitz said CRP was the best option for some of his land where the clay-heavy soil goes as deep as 15 feet in some areas. Water doesn’t evaporate from such soil very readily, making the growing conditions too wet at most times.

South Dakota’s 1 million enrolled CRP acres is down from a decade ago when totals were closer to 1.5 million acres. Several aspects of the program have seen changes through the years.

When the CRP program began, more producers enrolled entire quarter-sections of their land in CRP at a time. Now, producers such as Mendel are taking advantage of options to tailor the program to the portions of their land that aren’t prime for production.

Crop prices can have an influence on whether producers decide to use the program. In 2007, for example, South Dakota producers chose not to re-enroll a large amount of their acres in the program. In that year, almost 300,000 acres came out of the program.

The cause? CRP rental rates might have been lower than cropland rates at that time, said Jack B. Davis, a crops business management specialist for South Dakota State University Extension based in Mitchell, S.D.

After 2007, he said it was probably higher crop prices that influenced producers to take land out of CRP.

Today’s low crop prices are having the opposite effect. Low commodity prices make collecting CRP payments more attractive.