A new Economic Assessment of Conservation Reserve Program Lands for Hunting has been proposed by the Farm Service Agency (FSA) at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
FSA, working with the Commodity Credit Corporation, is seeking public comment on its proposed public information collection to study the program, which aims to conserve and improve soil, water and wildlife to improve hunting in rural areas on program lands and surrounding private land.
You can express your thoughts to FSA in writing by April 2. For details, see http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-02-01/html/2013-02358.htm.
FSA wants to find out how attracting hunters to the areas benefits local economies, on the theory that hunters will spend money and therefore increase employment opportunities. It now proposes its first statewide studies of how its investment in these programs is improving local economies.
FSA has only done local studies and they are at least a decade old and the program has changed significantly since then.
The study will seek to discover the amount of time hunters spend on reserve program lands, how much money they spend, how much hunting they do and the characteristics of the hunters.
FSA wants to survey 6,000 deer and bird hunters in North Dakota and South Dakota this year. It expects each respondent will need about 15 minutes.
In its announcement, FSA said “the data will be analyzed by Dr. John Loomis of Colorado State University's Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.”
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