IL Farmers, Landowners Make Conservation Strides

www.farmweeknow.com
2010-05-28

Illinois farmers and landowners recently received more proof of their conservation progress.

The latest National Resources Inventory (NRI) showed annual soil erosion on Illinois cropland dropped from more than 6.2 tons per acre in 1982 to 3.9 tons per acre in 2007, the last year data was collected by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

“The data confirms that Illinois’ private landowners work hard to protect our land and natural resources,” Illinois NRCS State Conservationist Bill Gradle said in a statement.

The NRI is a statistical survey of natural resource conditions and trends. Annual data samples are compared on both state and large river basin levels.

At 66.3 percent, cropland is the largest land use in Illinois (see accompanying graphic). Interestingly, Illinois has slightly larger percentage of acres in forest, 10.9 percent, than in developed/urban uses at 9.4 percent.

A significant trend has been the number of acres enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) over the years. Since 1982, than 835,000 Illinois acres were converted from cropland to some other use. More than 400,000 of those acres or about 48 percent were enrolled in CRP, said James Johnson, Illinois NRCS resource inventory specialist.

Johnson pointed out CRP started in 1986 and some land has gone into and out of the CRP program. “It’s a moving target,” he said about CRP enrollment. To date, CRP covers 1.8 percent of Illinois acres.

Illinois also gained 303,000 acres of forest between 1982 and 2001. “We had a lot of land enrolled in the Wetland Reserve Program (WRP) and planted in bottomland hardwood trees,” Johnson explained. “A lot of trees have been planted.”

Given the state’s urban growth, it is not surprising that Illinois lost more than 760,000 acres to development from 1982 to 2007. That would be comparable to the total conversion of McLean County to development, according to Johnson.


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