As another market surge carries cash corn prices toward $4.50 a bushel and soybeans to $11.50, the already bright income prospects for Nebraska farmers are enough to make a strong man weak at the knees.

But those same economic forces are posing a threat to what Tim McCoy regards as prime wildlife habitat and the best conservation program in agricultural history.

McCoy, agricultural program manager for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, pointed Wednesday to federal reports that show more than 90,000 acres coming out of the Conservation Reserve Program in the state at the end of the 2007 fiscal year and returning to increasingly profitable production.

“Given the call for acres and commodity crops, we have serious concerns overall for that program,” he said.

Officials from the Farm Service Agency office in Lincoln confirmed McCoy’s math and acknowledged the possibility of another exodus from a grass-covered expanse in 2009 and 2010.

Between Sept. 30 and Nov. 30, federal records show, Nebraska’s active CRP inventory declined from about 1.34 million acres to about 1.25 million. That adds up to about a 6.5 percent loss in 60 days.

The CRP was created in 1986 to get highly erodible land out of production. Landowners typically signed 10- or 15-year contracts to plant grass and other cover crops in vulnerable soil in exchange for annual payments.

The renewable federal offer was especially popular in counties in the state’s southeast corner, where fields were less fertile, irrigation was largely unavailable and aging farmers could use payments as a reliable source of retirement income.

The same grassy habitat attracted pheasants, prairie chickens and eager hunters to such places as Pawnee County, where the total CRP enrollment quickly rose to the maximum 25 percent of farmable land.

“The CRP in Nebraska and throughout the Midwest is the most successful conservation program we’ve ever had,” McCoy said.

Now, however, crop prices reaching into record-setting territory have dramatically changed the picture. And among wildlife and conservation advocates, “there’s very large concern all through the Midwest of what the impact of the changing agricultural climate will be on the CRP,” McCoy said.

In North Dakota, home to more than 3 million CRP acres in 2006, Ducks Unlimited is calling attention to the 2007 conversion to crops of enough ground to equal a strip 3 miles wide all the way from that state’s southern border to Canada.

Back in Southeast Nebraska, Pawnee City farmer Donald Bloss said he is among crop producers who are putting CRP acres back into production after keeping it in the federal reserve for 20 years.

“Some of it was already taken out this past year, and we’ll take out some more next year,” Bloss said.

Beyond rising crop prices, another factor in landowner thinking in Pawnee County and elsewhere is that the government’s annual compensation rates have not kept up with cash rents or property tax bills.

In Bloss’s case, “there’s no reason to look for ground to rent when we can access our own.”

He was careful to note that he is leaving what he regards as his most fragile acres in the federal program. He termed land being put back in production as “in very good condition,” with terraces, grassed waterways and other erosion control measures in place.

Furthermore, “one thing that’s a lot different now than 20 years ago is no-till application. You don’t see nearly as much erosion as 20 years ago when we plowed and worked the ground.”

But Game and Parks’ McCoy is mindful of other farmers who might not be so discriminating. He’s also worried the U.S. Department of Agriculture might do further damage to the CRP future by relaxing rules and allowing farmers to pull land out of the program before 10-year expiration dates without financial penalty.

“Our responsibility is to focus on providing important wildlife habitat,” he said. “We understand the pressures that are out there.”

Acting Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Conner said in September that he was not ready to offer what he described as “penalty-free early releases.” However, he also said, “I will not hesitate in the future to make adjustments to USDA programs if needed to achieve balance in the agricultural sector.”

Part of the pressure on Conner is coming from the livestock sector, where high corn prices do not contribute to a bright profit picture.

Milton Rogers, state director of the Farm Service Agency, said holders of Nebraska CRP contracts were given the option of extending their enrollments last fall for up to four years.

He conceded McCoy’s point about contract rates not keeping up with cash rents and “amplified concern now that commodity prices are getting as high as they are.”

Of course, “every increase (in rates) is an additional cost to the U.S. Treasury, too.”

If you’re a farmer, he said, CRP enrollment might have seemed a great idea when corn was worth $1.75 a bushel. At $4.50, it may not seem so great.

“If you were given that option,” Rogers asked, “what would your decision be?”

Reach Art Hovey at (402) 523-4949 or ahovey@alltel.net