The 2007 farm bill will continue to fund a 39.4-million acre Conservation Reserve Program, but Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and state Game and Fish officials expect a reduction in its use because of high grain prices.

The program, started in 1985, provides payments to farmers and ranchers for keeping erodible or environmentally sensitive cropland out of production.

Greg Link, of the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, said the program has been a big help in preserving the state's pheasant, big game and waterfowl populations. The increased populations are a boon for both conservationists and the state's growing hunting industry.

North Dakota has 3.4 million acres in the CRP program, an allotment it receives from the federal government based on a scoring formula that rates land on how environmentally sensitive it is. The most environmentally sensitive land is first in line for the program.

Link said any reduction in the total allotment could have had an adverse effect on western North Dakota, where a lot of land has low scores in the government's sensitivity rating system and thus would be among the first acres dropped out under any reduction.

Conrad said maintaining the CRP funding allotment was a low-key, widely agreed upon decision in committee.

Link said he's hoping that the committee agreement can survive the rest of the process - which involves a full vote in the Senate, committees of lawmakers to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions, and then final passage of an agreed upon version in both chambers.

"We hope the conservation title in the farm bill stays intact," he said. "If it were to decrease, it would have a definite impact on our waterfowl and pheasant populations."

But even without a federal funding reduction, the amount of CRP land is likely to decrease in the coming years. A recent study by the Farm Services Administration shows that at least 520,000 acres will fall out of the program by 2010.

Conrad said it's a simple matter of economics: Soaring grain prices make the land relatively more attractive to farm on.

"I think we will likely see a significant amount of acreage come out," he said.

Ethanol production and global food demand are behind the soaring prices.

But as farmers are making good money from these increases, a countervailing economic impact may be felt in the hunting industry. The FSA adjusts CRP compensation upward with the rise in commodity prices, but because it bases this on a three-year average and some of the most significant increases came in the last year, it's bound to be behind.

Scott McLeod, regional biologist for Ducks Unlimited, said it will have a widespread impact because many waterfowl hatch in North Dakota and are harvested by hunters somewhere else.

"Not only will it affect our waterfowl here, it will affect it throughout the U.S. and even into South America," McLeod.

He said Ducks Unlimited is happy that 39.4 million acres will continue to be funded because that will leave a large program that farmers can come back to if commodity prices drop, causing their relative economic incentives to shift.

(Reach reporter Jonathan Rivoli at 223-8482 or jonathan.rivoli@bismarcktribune.com.)