USDA and federal programs on private forest land

FSA does two distinct things with credit, and they are often conflated. A direct loan is made by the agency itself, underwritten and serviced by its own farm loan officers. A guaranteed loan is made by a commercial bank or a Farm Credit association, with the agency standing behind part of the balance so the lender can approve a file it would otherwise decline.

The eligibility tests are the agency's own and are published; they include a credit history test, and for direct loans a test that the applicant cannot obtain sufficient credit elsewhere on reasonable terms. That last one is the structural point of the direct programme: it is designed for the borrower the ordinary market will not serve, not as a cheaper alternative for one it will.

There are dedicated pools and terms for beginning farmers and ranchers, and for socially disadvantaged applicants. Loan limits, terms and every current figure are published by the agency at farmers.gov and change; the programme card below links to the source rather than repeating a number that will be wrong by the time it is read.

The Conservation Reserve Program pays an annual rental payment under a multi-year contract to take environmentally sensitive cropland out of production and establish a protective cover. Several of its practices establish trees, and that is how a tired row-crop field in the Black Belt becomes a pine or hardwood stand with the establishment cost shared.

The parts of CRP a landowner needs to keep straight are these. Land eligibility usually turns on cropping history, so pasture and existing woodland typically do not qualify. There is a general signup, held periodically and competitive, and a continuous signup for high-priority practices that stays open. CREP is a further variant run in partnership with a state. And the contract is a contract: it binds the acreage for its full term, it constrains what you may do on that ground, and it transfers with the land if you sell.

NRCS is where the work on the ground gets planned and cost-shared. Three of its programmes reach private forest land in the South.

EQIP

The workhorse. Technical help and financial assistance to install named conservation practices under a contract. On timberland the practices most often seen are forest stand improvement, prescribed burning, firebreaks, tree and shrub establishment, and access-road and stream-crossing work. It pays for practices, not for owning land.

CSP

For the owner already managing to a conservation standard who wants to go further, across the whole operation, under a multi-year contract. Where EQIP installs a practice, CSP is built around maintaining and improving conservation performance.

HFRP

Easements and restoration agreements aimed at recovering threatened and endangered species, improving biodiversity and storing carbon. In the South it shows up most on longleaf and bottomland hardwood restoration.

Two things are true of all three. Applications are ranked rather than first-come, so the file that scores against the local resource concerns is the file that gets funded. And the practice must be planned before it is installed - work done ahead of the contract is generally work you paid for yourself.

The Forest Stewardship Program's product is a written Forest Stewardship Plan for your tract: your objectives, an inventory of what is there, the soils and the site, and a schedule of what should happen and when. The Forest Service reports more than 25 million acres managed under such plans nationally.

It is worth understanding why that plan is the first thing a landowner should want, independent of any money. It is the document that turns 'I own some woods' into a management position. It is frequently a prerequisite for the NRCS practices above. It is what a lender reads when he asks what your plan for the tract is. And it is written by someone whose job is the resource rather than the transaction.

Delivery is through state forestry agency staff and cooperating consulting foresters; the Forest Service publishes contacts for each state's coordinator.

After a tornado, a hurricane, an ice storm or a wildfire has flattened a stand, the federal programme aimed squarely at private forest land is the Emergency Forest Restoration Program, run by FSA. It shares the cost of the emergency measures needed to restore the damaged land - the clean-up, the site preparation, and putting the ground back into trees.

Three practical points decide whether a landowner ever collects. EFRP is authorised county by county after a disaster, with an announced sign-up period, so the clock starts without regard to when you get to it. Damage is documented before it is cleaned up, which means photographs, dates and a record of the stand as it stood. And the tax treatment of a storm loss is a separate matter entirely, dealt with on the timber tax page.

There is a sequence, and it saves trips.

• Establish your records with FSA first: a farm number, the tract and its acreage, and the ownership and entity paperwork. Nearly everything downstream keys off it.
• Talk to the state forestry agency about a Forest Stewardship Plan. It is the document that unlocks and directs most of the rest.
• Take the plan to NRCS and discuss which practices fit the local resource concerns and this year's ranking.
• Take a loan question to FSA's farm loan staff, and take a guaranteed-loan question to your bank or Farm Credit association with the FSA guarantee in mind.
• Check the sign-up calendar rather than assuming a programme is open. Signups are periodic, and a missed window is a year.

This page names no rate, no rental payment, no cost-share percentage and no payment limit, and that is deliberate. Every one of those is set administratively, revised on its own schedule, and varies by programme, practice, county and signup. A number copied onto a page like this one is a number that will be quietly wrong within a year, and wrong in a way that reads authoritative.

The current figures live on the administering agency's own pages, linked in the programme cards below, and in the county office where a person can apply them to your acreage. Ask there, and ask what the number is for this signup rather than what it was.