Follow the simple three-step plan to create and analyze your own Minnesota Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) contracts database. You can also examine all variables if you click on Individual Records. When you're ready to go, click Generate Report. Or, to see your data in a map, click on our new feature: MLE Map on the left-side menu.

You’ll need to choose the geographic area you want covered, which data elements you want us to provide, and how you want us to display the data. You do this by first choosing your Boundaries (county, watershed…), then your Location (specific county and township/city), and finally your Attributes (year, summary level…).

Where appropriate, use Continue to move back to the main page and view your updated choices. To move back to the main page without making your changes take effect, press Cancel.

These files include CRP contracts as of January 1, 2007, the most recent data available from USDA. Each record is a single contract. Some contracts have missing data for some of the variables. Original data from USDA Farm Services Agency. The dataset includes over 122,000 contracts covering nearly 1,807,000 acres. We exclude contracts that were less than .1 acres in size. We exclude from display those contracts that were set to expire prior to the current year. Even though the majority of these contracts were said to have been renewed for another 10 years, USDA has not released an updated CRP dataset that we could use on Minnesota Land Economics. Consequently, the CRP contract coverage on MLE (and MLE Map) is an under-count of actual contract extent.

For details on the Conservation Reserve Program, click here.

Field names

County: County in which sale occurred

Township/City: Minor civil division in which sale occurred

Acres: Number of acres under contract

Expdate: Year current contract expires

Practice: Cover practice. (List below)

Year: Year contract signed

Parcel Size: Number of deeded acres in parcel

Practice list:

CRP Contract data updated when available.