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BY DON AUDETTE
Rappahannock News Writer
There finally appears to be a program that really pays off for local farmers. It must be true because the $91 million funding is a one-shot deal, first-come, first-serve. Local farmers will have to move fast, though, as other counties will be competing for the same money.
The effort is called the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP).
The jist of it is that you will be paid $85 per acre per year, for 10 or 15 years, for each acre of CREP-buffered land on your property that is adjacent to rivers, streams, intermittent streams, springs, seeps, wetlands, ponds, sinkholes, or in former wetlands capable of being restored.
In addition, you will be paid 75-100% of all costs for fencing, .tree planting, native warm grass establishment, wetland restoration, alternate watering facilities, and any limited livestock access to streams required to establish the CREP-buffered areas.
There is even more. Any participant may elect to enroll their CREP-buffered area or restored wetland into a permanent open-space easement and receive an additional onetime payment of $500 per acre for doing so. It is your choice.
Who is paying you this money? The Virginia Conservation Partnership, composed of the United States Department of Agriculture, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, the local Soil and Water Conservation District, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Ducks Unlimited, and private land trusts.
Let’s take an example using the $85 per acre rate. Suppose you have a large farm that has had row crops for at least two out of the last five years, or that your land is currently being used for grazing cattle or some other food/fiber animal (horses do not count, unless they are draft horses),
Assume that 80 acres of your farm qualifies for the CREP program. The buffer areas are calculated as follows. Minimum width: a minimum of 35 feet from the top of a stream bank, or 30 percent of a floodplain, which ever is greater, must be devoted to a CREP buffer.
Maximum width: the maximum average buffer width is 300 feet as long as it is in a floodplain. Once out of the floodplain, and additional 35 feet of upland can be included as long as the buffer does not exceed 300 feet.
All buffers can be at least 100 feet wide regardless of the floodplain shape, but never
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