Eliminate the Conservation Reserve Program and Weaken Wetland Protections

Project 2025's USDA chapter proposes two interlocking attacks on conservation. First, it calls for eliminating the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) outright, claiming that idled land is wasted and that food production must be maximized. This is a false choice. CRP pays farmers to retire environmentally sensitive cropland — fragile soils, flood-prone fields, riparian buffers — and delivers proven public benefits: reduced erosion, improved water quality, wildlife habitat, and carbon storage. For small and mid-scale farms, CRP payments are a reliable income floor. Eliminating CRP would force those acres back into production, likely concentrating them in the hands of the largest operations that can absorb the commodity-price risk, while driving conservation-minded farmers off the land.

Second, the chapter targets NRCS wetland compliance and the appeals process, framing federal wetland determinations as regulatory overreach. It endorses the NRCS Wetland Compliance and Appeals Reform Act — legislation that would make it harder for NRCS to protect wetlands and easier for farmers to overturn determinations. The stated goal is to give states control over wetland mapping and to ban NRCS from revisiting determinations on the same area. This would weaken the conservation compliance that links federal farm program eligibility to wetland protection — a cornerstone of the 1985 Farm Bill that has kept millions of acres of wetlands from being drained. Without strong federal enforcement, wetlands will be plowed up, especially on marginal land, worsening flood risk and water quality.

As of this writing, the administration has not yet eliminated CRP, but the pressure to shrink conservation programs is real. Senator Rounds reintroduced the NRCS reform bill in November 2025 — it remains proposed, not enacted. The fight now is to defend CRP funding in the next farm bill and to oppose any legislation that strips NRCS of its authority to enforce wetland protections. Farmers and conservation groups must demand that Congress maintain — and increase — CRP enrollment caps, and reject any effort to devolve wetland oversight to states without strong federal backstops.