The Soil Bank Program is a federal program (authorized by the Soil Bank Act, P.L. 84-540, Title I) of the late 1950s and early 1960s that paid farmers to retire land from production for 10 years. It was the predecessor to today’s

Conservation Reserve Program The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is a cost-share and rental payment program of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Under the program, the government pays farmers to take certain agriculturally used croplands out of produc ...

(CRP). Proposed by President Eisenhower as part of the 1956 Agriculture Act, the original idea was for the government to buy back sub-marginal land that was homesteaded in the late 1800s. This would both extend pastures, forests and watersheds and also reduce the need for the government to support

overproduction In economics, overproduction, oversupply, excess of supply or glut refers to excess of supply over demand of products being offered to the market. This leads to lower prices and/or unsold goods along with the possibility of unemployment. The d ...

. The maximum enrollment was in 1960. Some elements in the CRP, such as a limit on CRP acres per county, were a response to the Soil Bank experience.

References

*{{CRS, article = Report for Congress: Agriculture: A Glossary of Terms, Programs, and Laws, 2005 Edition, url = http://ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/05jun/97-905.pdf, author= Jasper Womach United States Department of Agriculture