In Consequences of Land Retirement Policies on Agricultural Labor and Land Tenure: Evidence from the Historical Conservation Reserve Program in the United States, Aparna Howlader (Economics, Chatham) and Liqing Li (Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M) examine the short- and long-term economic impacts of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) on agricultural labor and land tenure. The CRP is a land retirement initiative first introduced in 1956 by the United States Department of Agriculture. The program provides incentives to landowners to retire their land for environmental purposes.
By compiling digitized archival CRP records and agricultural census data, the authors make two primary contributions to the existing literature on the program. First, they consider the economic effects on agricultural labor and land tenure, both areas that receive less attention than the environmental benefits of conservation programs. Second, they demonstrate how conservation programs can reshape how land is owned, leased, or accessed for farming and how changes to these land tenure structures can result in the uneven distribution of program benefits.
The authors note that economic benefits, particularly on labor markets and land tenure institutions, are significantly understudied. CRP payments are paid directly to landowners. As land is removed from agricultural production, tenant farmers and hired agricultural workers may bear a disproportionate share of the program’s economic costs. The study suggests a decline in both the percentage of tenants among farm operators and the percentage of tenant-cultivated acreage from the start of the program, which has continued since its reintroduction in 1985. Additionally, negative impacts are more prominent in areas with a higher prevalence of sharecroppers and nonwhite farmer operators, which raises equity concerns.
Based on these findings, the authors suggest a need for modern CRP policies that account for tenant adjustment costs to help mitigate labor displacement and transition programs to preserve agricultural participation while maintaining environmental goals.
The authors conclude that the historical CRP data demonstrates that conservation policies produce significant economic and institutional effects along with associated environmental benefits. The program has retired environmentally sensitive land; it has also altered land tenure patterns and has disproportionately affected tenant farms and agricultural laborers, most prominently in the South. Based on this evidence of reshaped labor markets and land ownership relationships, the authors suggest future conservation policies should account for economic consequences while pursuing environmental objectives.
